Scandinavians in Canada: A Community in the Shadow of the United States

Scandinavians in Canada: A Community
in the Shadow of the United States
PER ANDERS RUDLING
n comparison with its southern neighbor, Scandinavian immigra­tion
into Canada has been given little attention. Scandinavians in
.Canada, and particularly in western Canada, constitute a fairly
significant immigrant group, yet the number of books and articles
published on the subject remains fairly small. This, in turn, reflects
the relatively weak sense of community and a separate identity among
the Scandinavian Canadians. Why is that the case? This article will
focus on the impacts of the large Scandinavian "mother" community
south of the border, and how the Scandinavians in Canada in matters
regarding culture, religion, and literature were heavily influenced by
the larger Scandinavian community in the United States.
One of the relatively few publications dedicated entirely to the
subject of Swedes in Canada, Elinor Berglund Barr's 1993 The Swed­ish
Experience in Canada: A n A n n o t a t e d B i b l i o g r a p h y , summarizes the
situation thus:
Clearly, Canadian scholarship stands in a disadvantaged
position. No university or discipline specializes in Swedish
studies after almost two decades of official multiculturalism.
And no single repository has a mandate to collect either
published works, documents, or artifacts reflecting the Swed­ish
experience in Canada.1
One reason for this has been that the Swedes, and especially the
Norwegians, have been "invisible" in the ethnic mosaic of Canada.2
PER ANDERS R U D L I N G holds an M . A . in Russian from Uppsala University,
Sweden, and an M.A. in history f r o m San Diego State University, and is completing
his P h . D . in history at the University of A l b e r t a . While his doctoral dissertation pertains
to Belarus, his current research is on identity issues, diasporas, and nationalism.
152
They were latecomers to the country and very similar to the Anglo-
Saxons in customs and culture. While this "invisibility" has certainly
been an asset to the Scandinavians in certain ways, it has also left a
poorly organized Scandinavian-Canadian community, with a weak
sense of identity of its own.
Scandinavian emigration to Canada began later than the emigra­tion
to the United States. It also never approached the size of the
Scandinavian exodus to the U.S. These differences may be partially
explained by the extensive system of prepaid passages to the United
States and the relative ignorance of Canada in Scandinavia at the
time of the most intense period of emigration.3 When serious Cana­dian
recruitment efforts got underway in the 1880s, most of the
potential emigrants in western and northern Europe had already been
recruited to North America—and most of them had gone to the
United States.4
If one looks solely at Swedish emigration to the U.S., 1846 is
often regarded as the starting point. It was then that the self-ap­pointed
prophet Erik Jansson from Biskopskulla, Uppland, Sweden,
led a movement of some 1,500 followers across the Atlantic, settling
in the Zion of the prophet, Bishop H i l l , or Biskopskulla, in Illinois.5
Perhaps not surprisingly, Swedish emigration to Canada began at
about the same time.6 This is because many of the Swedes who came
to North America did so by sailing from Norway to Quebec. A l ­though
a few stayed in Canada, the overwhelming majority contin­ued
to the United States.7 As the American frontier closed and the
amount of available land in the United States declined, more and
more Scandinavians started regarding Canada, and particularly the
Canadian Midwest, as an increasingly attractive area for immigra­tion.
The Canadian Pacific Railway opened up possibilities for colo­nization
of the prairie, and in the 1880s many Minnesota Scandina­vians
were moving north, in particular to Saskatchewan and Alberta.8
(See map of Swedes in Canada, p. 179.)
As in the United States, the Scandinavian immigrants arrived
relatively late and found the best land already taken. Many of the
Swedes immigrating to Canada came from the northern parts of
Sweden, and many had worked in forestry. Many of the Swedish
settlements came to be located in the forested areas in Alberta.
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Another region where the Swedish presence still is particularly strong,
according to the Swedish emigration historian U l f Beijbom, is around
Edmonton. This region became something of a "Minnesota of
Canada."9 8 Here, ethnic Swedish settlers were among the pioneers.
Curiously, many of these Swedes did not arrive from Sweden proper
or the United States. In fact, many belonged to a little-known Swed­ish
community in Southern Ukraine, called Gammalsvenskby. These
early settlers arrived in the Edmonton-Wetaskiwin area as early as
1885, following in the footsteps of early Mennonite immigrants from
Ukraine. By 1933, immigrants from Gammalsvenskby and their de­scendants
constituted as much as 20 percent of the Swedes in Alberta.
In 1930 their community was expanded by some ninety additional
Gammalsvenskby pioneers, twelve of whom are still alive at the time
of the seventy-fifth anniversary of their immigration to Canada in
2005.9 b However, the indisputable center for Swedish life in Canada
from the 1880s up to the outbreak of World War II was Winnipeg.1 0
It became central to the Scandinavians in Canada in ways no city in
the U.S. ever was for Scandinavian Americans.
As noted above, Swedish emigration to Canada was small com­pared
to migration to the United States, and significant numbers did
not come until somewhat later. For example, while the Swedish-born
population in the United States peaked in 1910, the Swedish popu­lation
in Canada reached its peak in 1931. As a comparison, in 1910
there were 665,000 Swedish-born and 753,000 second-generation
Swedes in the United States, with the people of Swedish origin
making up 1.5 percent of the U.S. population. The number of sec­ond-
generation Swedes peaked in 1930." In Canada, the number of
Swedish-born people was almost 35,000, with the total number of
people of Swedish origin estimated at 81,000, making up 0.8 percent
of the total population in the 1931 census.12 In the census of 1911,
the people who had migrated from the United States into Canada
were not regarded as nor counted as Americans, but according to
their country of ethnicity. They were, therefore, counted as Britons,
Scandinavians, etc., even if they often referred to themselves as
Americans.1 3 Of the total number of Scandinavians in the 1911
census, 29,000 were born in Sweden, 20,000 in Norway, and some
4,000 in Denmark. To this number were added 26,600 Scandina-
154
vians born in the United States. Of the Scandinavian-born immi­grants,
no fewer than 86 percent had settled in the prairie provinces
and British Columbia, while two-thirds of the U.S.-born Scandina­vians
settled in the West.14
The Scandinavians were welcomed and desired as settlers, espe­cially
after they had shown their abilities as farmers on the American
prairies. The relatively weak sense of a separate nationality of the
Swedes, which often meant that they easily vanished and were as­similated
into the mainstream population, made them all the more
attractive as immigrants.1 5 The Swedes who emigrated to the United
States had generally a very positive attitude toward Anglo-Saxon
culture and customs, which they often admired. In general, the simi­larities
in languages, religion, and customs between the Scandina­vians
and the Anglo-Saxon majority population made the Scandina­vians
easy to assimilate. Nevertheless, the group remained remark­ably
ethnically homogenous. For example, relatively few Swedes
married outside their ethnic group. Even in the heavily immigrant
city of Chicago some 90 percent of the Swedes married other Swedes
in 1910. The few mixed marriages were made primarily with other
Scandinavians or Germans. As a reason for this ethnic exclusiveness
Ulf Beijbom suggests that the choices of partners were limited to
Gammalsvenskby farmers in meadows, from Helge N e l s o n , The Swedes and Swedish
Settlements in North America, 355
155
fellow Lutherans or, at least, Protestants.16 Resistance to the English
language or American public schools was rare, and many of the
Swedish emigrants to America had not been influenced by the ro­mantic
and nationalist-motivated wave of interest in peasant and
folk art in Sweden of the 1890s. The writer Vilhelm Berger suggests,
as an explanation for the ready and widespread acceptance of the
English language, the relatively low level of education among the
emigrants and their inability to see themselves "as carriers of an old
culture in a new country."17
Another factor that made the Scandinavians welcome in Canada
was that they were considered good farmers. This was particularly
true for the Danes, who had a long tradition of excellence in agricul­ture.
Denmark and the Netherlands were the only two countries in
western Europe that were relatively unaffected by urbanization dur­ing
the nineteenth century, due to efficient and competitive farming
techniques. A commonly held perception in the Canadian political
establishment around the turn of the century was, "There are few
nations that have a sharper eye for the best agricultural ground in
Canada, than the Danes. The experience tells us that wherever the
Danes settle, there will be a blossoming and prosperous [ b l o m s t r e n de
og v e l d y r k e n d e ] colony."18
Even though the Scandinavians have remained one of the most
agricultural and rural of the North American immigrant groups, al­ready
by 1910 a majority of them were urban dwellers.1 9 In relation
to other Scandinavians, it was the Swedes who moved particularly
rapidly into the cities, and this trend accelerated the breaking of
traditions and linguistic barriers. The Americanization of the Swed­ish-
Americans was, therefore, ' cultural rather than biological.
Another factor in the declining strength of the Swedish culture
was the relatively lower birth rate among Swedish women compared
to Norwegians and Germans, some of their most common neighbors
in the American Midwest. That increased the strength of Norwegian
and German communities at the expense of the Swedes.20
As Richard Hofstaedter has shown in his Social D a r w i n i s m i n A m e r i ­can
T h o u g h t , the notion of racial mysticism played an important role
in Social Darwinism in North America.2 1 In particular, an aura of
mystique surrounded the Nordic "race," to which the Anglo-Saxon,
156
Germanic, and Scandinavian peoples belonged. This Germanic fam­ily
was sometimes extended to include the Finns, sometimes not.22
The Swedish Finns who had come to Canada from the coastal areas
of western Finland were hardly distinguishable from the mainland
Swedes; but Finns from the interior of Finland were sometimes re­garded,
by Scandinavians and Canadians alike, as "belonging rather
to the Mongolian race."2 3 These beliefs surrounding the Germanic
peoples were commonly held on both sides of the Atlantic. Racial
biology was the science of the day. The only difference was in regards
to where in the hierarchy of the Germanic family Scandinavians and
Anglo-Saxons belonged. Sometimes the Scandinavians were regarded
second only to the Anglo-Saxons when it came to desirable racial
and cultural qualities,2 4 at other times they were ranked higher than
the Anglo-Saxons. Sir Charles Tupper, the High Commissioner for
Canada in London, described Scandinavians thus in a letter to the
Honorable President of the Privy Council in 1892: "The Scandina­vian
becomes at once an ideal immigrant who is not surpassed by
any other nation, not even by the pick of the emigrants from the
United Kingdom."2 5
The issue of class also played an important role in the selection
and/or desirability of various immigrant groups. As the number of
poor English migrants to Canada increased, it became increasingly
hard to find immigrants who had the qualities desired.2 6 The Cana­dian
emigration agents were blunt about what these qualities were.
They emphasized physical strength and docility—apparently traits
that Scandinavians possessed—among the men, who were wanted in
the mining and lumber industries.2 7 As for Scandinavian women,
Tupper had the following to say: "The Scandinavian servant girls are
clean, honest, industrious and intelligent. They are generally well
domesticated and capable women, and accustomed to low wages
and a simple quiet life."2 8 John Dyke, Canadian immigration agent in
Liverpool, from which many Scandinavians left for the United States,
held similar views: "In giving an impetus to immigration, one emi­grant
from the Scandinavian Kingdoms . . . is equal to seven English­men."
2 9
The implications are clear. The Scandinavians were the sort of
immigrants the United States and Canada desired. They were as-
157
sumed to be content with little and would not compete with the
Anglo-Saxons. Yet, in regards to race, language, and religion, they
were considered appropriate as potential new Canadians.
Dyke further reported that even the Prime Minister himself, Sir
John A . Macdonald, had been "specially interested in the fine bodies
of Scandinavians he had seen en route to the United States."30 De­spite
these positive attitudes on the part of Canadian authorities, few
Scandinavian emigrants found their way to Canada. A t the turn of
the century, there were 31,042 Scandinavians and 2,502 Finns in
Canada, compared to 1,250,733 Scandinavians and 129,680 Finns
in the United States.31
To combat this imbalance, and to increase the number of Scan­dinavian
immigrants to Canada, the Canadian government started
an active campaign for the recruitment of immigrants of desirable
ethnic origins in the late nineteenth century. This bore some suc­cesses.
In 1873, for example, a group of about one hundred Icelandic
immigrants established a settlement in Ontario. Half of these moved
south of the border and settled in Wisconsin, while the rest tried to
establish a colony in Russeau, Muskoka.3 2 They soon moved further
west to the district of Kewatin in what today is the province of
Manitoba, where, in 1875, they set up Nýja Ísland, centered around
the community of Gimli (which means paradise) on the southwest
shore of Lake Winnipeg.3 3 When the Icelanders first arrived in
Manitoba, the local people were surprised to see Caucasian, white
Scandinavians. "Where are the Icelanders? Show us the Icelanders!"
demanded the locals when the party arrived. John Taylor, the immi­gration
scout who had recruited the Icelanders, pointed at the group.
"There are the Icelanders. You see them there." The locals refused to
believe him. "We know what the Icelanders are like. They are short,
about four feet, rather stout and thickset, with long black hair and
much like the Eskimos. These people are not Icelanders. They are
white people!"34
The new arrivals organized their colony as a "miniature republic"
and based its laws upon the Icelandic democratic experiences of the
Althing.3 5 They adopted a constitution early in 1878 and officially
declared their colony to be an independent republic. Icelandic was
declared the only official language of the republic.3 6 The constitution
158
"regulated elections; defined the duties of voters as well as officials;
provided for taxation and public works; for relief to the needy, guard­ianship
of minors, appraisal and disposal of estates; arbitration of
disputes with a court of appeal; the keeping of records, covering vital
statistics, economic progress, estates and wardships."37
The constitutionalism and the pioneering nature of the settle­ments
on the shore of Lake Winnipeg became important ingredients
in the Icelandic-Canadian creation myths. Much of this is just that,
however, myth. While Nýja Ísland was established well outside the
boundaries of the then-small territory of the province of Manitoba, it
was nevertheless fully under the laws of Canada. Despite this reality,
the constitution was of great importance for the legitimacy of the
settlement. It provided a sense of stability and was a link to the
history and a symbol of the continuity of Icelandic political culture.
As such it carried enormous symbolical importance to the settlers.
The constitution remained in effect for almost a decade until the
federal Canadian government abolished it in 1887.38
The Icelanders had originally planned to settle in the United
States, but were persuaded by. a Canadian immigration agent to
settle north of the border and to try out the new land under special
provisions. The Governor-General himself, Lord Dufferin, had vis­ited
Iceland and approved of its people.3 9 Not long after the estab­lishment
of Nýja Ísland in 1877, the Governor-General, who had
been taking an active interest in the fate of the Icelandic republic,
traveled all the way from Ottawa to visit the settlement.4 0 He was
genuinely pleased with what he saw. The Icelanders are a proudly
literate people, and Dufferin was particularly impressed that these
poor immigrants who still lived in recently erected huts possessed
substantial private libraries. This was something rare among pioneers
on the prairies, even among those who were second- and third-generation
Canadians. He had not entered "a single cot or hut in the
colony where there was not a library of twenty to thirty volumes
however bare the walls and scanty the furnishing."4 1 Ironically, the
visit and speech of the representative of the queen became a defining
legitimizing moment for the Icelandic Canadians, a historical event
in importance comparable to the adoption of their "republican" con­stitution.
159
The experience from Nýja Ísland apparently impressed the Ca­nadian
government, because the province of Manitoba became the
most active in preparing and printing immigrant recruitment pam­phlets
in the Nordic languages for distribution all over Northern
Europe.4 2 John Dyke had the same positive impression of Icelanders
as he had of mainland Nordic immigrants. According to him, the
Icelanders "were one of the finest lots of emigrants which have ever
left Europe; just the people for the new country, very simple i n their
habits and requirements, and remarkably abstemious."43 This was an
attitude shared by the local Manitoba papers: "[The Icelanders] are
smart-looking, intelligent people and a most valuable acquisition to
the population of our province."44
The propaganda campaign that followed was a massive under­taking.
Between 1883 and 1894, the federal government in Ottawa
sent 390,000 pamphlets or leaflets to Denmark and Norway, 330,000
to Sweden, and 56,000 to Finland. To these numbers we must add
the leaflets distributed in the Nordic countries by the Canadian
Pacific Railroad, steamship lines, and the provinces.4 5 Apparently
the over-zealous Canadian immigration agents were beginning to be
successful, as they became the subjects of severe criticism by Denmark's
central government. Dyke reported to Dominion authorities that the
Danish government was planning to either restrict or prohibit emi­gration
from Iceland to Canada, as they feared a depletion of the
Icelandic population.46
Encouraged by the success of New Iceland, a series of similar
projects were undertaken, catering to the other Nordic peoples. The
first Danish colony, New Denmark, had been set up in New Brunswick
in 1872,47 but after almost twenty years of existence, high land prices
had kept the population small. In 1893 the settlement still only had
83 families.4 8 In 1927 it had a population of some 700 Danes. How­ever,
due to the poor quality of the soil, farming remained marginal
and expansion stagnated.49 A New Scandinavia settlement in Manitoba
did not fare too well either. By 1891 it counted only 77 families.5 0 A
New Finland was established in Saskatchewan and a New Norway in
Alberta 1894, but neither was very successful in terms of recruiting
immigrants.5 1 In the case of the Finns, they were too poor, and many
simply lacked the initial financing needed in order to utilize the free
160
land they received, while others were reluctant to take out loans or
commit to the long-term investment necessary to be successful farm­ers.
52 The number of Finns remained small, and many of them re­turned
home to the newly independent Finland during the 1920s
and 1930s. A substantial group of radical Finns even re-migrated
from North America to Soviet Karelia.
In Saskatchewan, the two major Swedish settlements were Percival
and New Stockholm. They were both small, and today no more than
500 Scandinavians still live in Percival.5 3 New Stockholm was orga­nized
by the Scandinavian National Association (Skandinaviska
Nationalföreningen) in Winnipeg, founded in 1884 and catering pri­marily
to the Swedes of Winnipeg. The initiative came from Emmanuel
Öhlén, a central figure among Scandinavian-Canadians in Winnipeg.
The purpose was to make the transition to the new country easier for
recent immigrants.5 4 One of the ways to do so was to establish a
Scandinavian colony for recent arrivals, which would work as an
alternative to Winnipeg, the central city for Swedes in Canada, where
life often was grim and the prospects limited for recently arrived
immigrants with poor command of English. Öhlén worked for the
Canadian government in different capacities, one of which was as
immigration scout.55 Between February and May 1886, Öhlén was in
Sweden, where he promoted the new colony and the Canadian west
on behalf of the Canadian government.5 6 However, New Stockholm
never really took off, and the Swedish population there remained
insignificant. Today the small village is dominated by a large Hungar­ian
church and cemetery.
Winnipeg was the central point of Scandinavian life in Western
Canada.5 7 Interestingly, as time went by it started to attract more
and more Icelanders as well, both from New Iceland and from Ice­land
proper,58 even if a majority of the Icelandic immigrants up until
the end of the century immigrated directly to G i m l i . 5 9 In comparison
with other Nordic peoples, the Icelandic situation was different from
the beginning. Their somewhat contradictory focus on assimilation,
while retaining their ethnic profile, contrasted with the other Scandi­navians'
"first generation" immigrant attitude, which emphasized the
establishment of economic security and a decent material standard,
without much involvement in the political or cultural life of Canada.6 0
161
The Icelanders had two newspapers, each supporting one of the two
major rival political parties—the Conservatives and Liberals—and
far-progressed plans to start up a secondary school in Winnipeg that
would open up the road to professional careers for the Icelandic
immigrants. Other Scandinavians had no such plans, and their com­munity
was less integrated into mainstream Canadian society.61
The Icelandic approach proved to be more successful, economi­cally
as well as politically, and soon the Icelanders were the most
successful Nordic immigrant group in western Canada. One of the
peculiarities of immigration is that the social-economic order some­times
is changed in the new country. The Icelanders, the poorest
Nordic people, became the economic elite among the Nordic immi­grants
to Canada. Among the other Scandinavians in Winnipeg,
there was a constant inferiority complex toward the Icelanders, which
further added to the alienation caused by the linguistic barrier that
already existed between Icelandic and the other Scandinavian lan­guages.
62 Icelandic participation in Scandinavian community events
was given attention in the same way as Anglo-Saxon participation
was, and the Icelanders were seen as something of a big brother,
richer and more successful.63
Winnipeg was also the only city to develop a "Swede town" in
Canada.6 4 This center of settlement was and remained central to the
Swedish and Scandinavian population in Canada from the time im­migration
started in the 1870s up until 1940, when Vancouver took
over as the largest "Scandinavian" city in Canada. After 1929, the
number of new arrivals was very low, and many Winnipeg Scandina­vians
had already left the city and moved further west to British
Columbia.6 5
In religious matters the Scandinavian-American influences on
the Scandinavian-Canadian community were strong from the very
outset, and, as in America, religious issues divided the Scandinavian
community from the very start. These divisions ran not only between
different Protestant denominations, but also between religious and
nonreligious Swedes. The religious differences were not great, how­ever,
and the divisions centered mainly on what seem to be minor—
albeit important at the time—theological issues. Virtually all the
religious life in Scandinavia was based upon different theological
162
doctrines stemming from Lutheranism. The same thing was true for
American and Canadian Scandinavians. The differences separating
different Lutheran-based theologies may appear minuscule and insig­nificant
to a latter-day observer, living in an age when the more
liberal Protestant denominations are in crisis and the Lutheran and
Episcopalian churches in America seem to be moving closer and
closer to each other and have clergy that are interchangeable. But
from the very outset religion became an ethnic marker in the New
World, and Lutheranism became the symbol and representation of
Scandinavian or Nordic heritage.
There were three Swedish churches in Winnipeg, two Lutheran
and one linked to the Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant Church
of America.6 6 The latter was a splinter group from the Swedish
Lutheran Church back in Sweden, and the North American branch
had broken with the Augustana Synod.6 7 From the very beginning
the Lutherans had been worried that the Mission Covenant and the
Anglican Church would proselytize and recruit members among the
Lutheran immigrants. The Mission Covenant congregation was feared
because of its zealousness, the Anglican Church because of its simi­larity
to the Lutheran church and the fact that it possessed both
buildings and a permanent clergy.68 The Episcopalian, Presbyterian,
and Methodist Churches also had the advantage of being established,
Anglo-Saxon churches, and were not thus regarded as "foreign" or
"ethnic" congregations. Some Lutheran Scandinavians had "capitu­lated"
and joined these Protestant denominations.6 9 The Mission
Covenant Church had sent a Swedish-American missionary from
Michigan in 1874 to work among the Swedes in Winnipeg, and in
1884 the church extended its Dakota and Red River Valley district
to include Winnipeg. In 1885 God's Scandinavian Congregation (Guds
Skandinaviska Församling) was established in Winnipeg. It soon
changed name to the First Scandinavian Christian Mission Congre­gation
(Första Skandinaviska Kristna Missionsförsamlingen).7 0 The
Lutherans, too, were under the leadership of Swedish Americans. In
1890 the Zion Lutheran Congregation (Lutherska Zionförsamlingen)
was established. This came a year after the establishment of a Lutheran
church in New Stockholm. The Lutherans were not especially eager
proselytizers; they were more oriented toward ethnic Scandinavian
163
and German communities. Often Lutheran congregations were set
up in response to Mission Covenant activity. Manitoba became part
of the Augustana Lutheran Church's Minnesota Synod. Clerical orga­nization
and theological orientation were some of the matters in
which the 49t h parallel proved to be irrelevant to the Scandinavian
community.
While the Mission Covenant Church was pan-Scandinavian, Zion
Lutheran was clearly Swedish in character, and this was, in part, an
inheritance from the mother church in America. South of the border,
the Norwegians had broken off from the Augustana Synod already in
1870 and created a synod of their own. In Winnipeg the Danes and
Norwegians set up their own Lutheran congregation, independent of
the Augustana Synod.7 1 The Swedish Lutherans under the Augustana
Synod were very nationalistic, and Swedish patriotism, royalism, and
national symbols were a part of the agenda and the identity of the
church.7 2-
There is another important aspect of Scandinavian religious ac­tivities
in North America. Nationalism in Europe had, since the days
of Herder and Fichte, been centered upon language and linguistic
identity. In North America, where there was a strong emphasis on
assimilation and acquisition of the English language, the use of Scan­dinavian
languages declined rapidly with every generation, and was
thus obviously not a good ethnic marker. This is not to say that the
Scandinavians did not worry about the decline of the use of their
languages in America, but religion largely replaced language as a
marker of Scandinavian heritage and ethnicity.
The religious Swedes, in particular those who belonged to the
Mission Covenant Church, often showed a high degree of intoler­ance
toward the nonreligious and objected to drinking, dancing, and
nonreligious musical entertainment in Scandinavian community
events.73 Another serious divide within the community was between
drinkers and teetotalers, the latter being the only nonreligious orga­nized
force to rival the churches.7 4 This was one of the reasons why
religious and political discussions were explicitly forbidden in the
constitution of the Scandinavian Club.7 5 Scandinavian organizations
existed all across America, and they expanded into Canada through
the Swedish-Americans. Today, perhaps the most active are the Sons
164
of Norway, founded in Minneapolis in 1895,76 and the Vasa Order of
America.7 7 These clubs were cultural in orientation and wanted to
elevate themselves above religious and political divisions. Appar­ently,
they were not entirely successful, as one Danish immigrant to
Canada reflected when he complained about the meager selection of
cultural activities on the Canadian prairies: "There is also a lot that
you miss from back home, things that you hardly didn't think of back
there, such as readily [sic] access to good entertaining, music, theater,
lectures, sports, entertainment for both boys and girls."78
The Scandinavian clubs and societies were set up to counter this
perceived cultural void and to bridge the gap to the faraway home­land
for many homesick Scandinavians. The clubs and lodges were
also designated to help people in need, as medical and social services
often were limited or simply nonexistent.79
With the notable exception of the Icelandic Canadians, the other
Nordic immigrants seem to have been relatively unsuccessful in trans­planting
their literatures to North America. Vilhelm Moberg, while
traveling through the Swedish-American settlements in the United
States in the late 1940s, made the following observation:
The American people have an average higher material
standard of living than us, but the cultural standard of the
large masses is lower than in Sweden. As far as I have been
able to tell the bookshelf is a rarer piece of furniture in
American homes than in Swedish. Even more seldom do you
see paintings of artistic value on their walls. . . . A rich and
highly-developed theater life is flourishing in the largest cit­ies,
but outside these, theater art is something rare. Theaters
are few, the cinemas are reigning supreme. Even a city as big
as Minneapolis—with a population roughly the same size as
Stockholm—lacks a permanent theater. In the city of Turku
12,000 Swedes maintain a theater, but no one would come
up with the fantastic idea of founding a Swedish theater in,
say, Chicago, where there are at least 100,000 persons who
can speak and understand our language. Unfortunately, it is
not the number of Swedes that are deciding the survival of
our culture in foreign lands. A Swede in Turku and a Swede
165
in Chicago are not comparable as individuals.80
The relatively limited scale of a vital Scandinavian literature and
theater in North America was to some extent compensated by the
Scandinavian-language press, which reflected the size and the vitality
of the community. According to the Swedish journalist Alfred
Söderström, up until 1910 there had been no fewer than 1,158
Swedish-American newspapers and journals issued in North America.
The Swedish press was represented in 29 states. In Illinois alone, 324
papers had been published, and Minnesota saw 190. In the spring of
1910 there were 58 weekly journals and 232 monthly publications in
Swedish America. The two largest were Svenska T r i b u n e n - N y h e t e r in
Chicago, with a circulation of 65,000 in 1915, and Svenska A m e r i k a n s ka
Posten in Minneapolis, with 56,000 readers that year.81 The Norwe­gian-
language press in the United States also had a large circulation.
Between 1847 and 1925 some 500 Norwegian journals and newspa­pers
were started in North America—although only about one-fourth
of them survived for any length of time. In 1918 the combined
circulation of these papers was 615,000, the Canadian-Norwegian
papers having a circulation of only 15,000.82
In comparison with the Scandinavian press in the United States,
the Canadian-Scandinavian press was minuscule. In many ways, the
media situation among the Scandinavians in Canada differed, not
surprisingly, from that of the Scandinavians in America. Unlike the
Scandinavian Americans, who had a longer presence in the New
World and a much larger community, the Scandinavians in Canada
did not have an independent press to compare with that south of the
border. Another example of the irrelevance of the border is the fact
that Scandinavian-American newspapers dominated the Scandina­vian-
language press in Canada, their dominance being further strength­ened
by the strong presence of Scandinavian-Americans in Canada.
Nevertheless, the Scandinavians in Canada had their own publi­cations.
The first major newspaper in Scandinavian Canada was
S k a n d i n a v i s k e C a n a d i e n s a r e n , which was founded in 1887 and lasted
until 1895—by which time the paper came out as a small flyer,
marketing different government-sponsored Scandinavian colonization
projects.83 Around the same year, the Scandinavian-language paper
166
Canada was started. It was a continuation of the local paper of the
Mission Covenanters, but it now went through a transformation to
become "a general and secular news magazine."8 4 Its political posi­tion
was enthusiastically Liberal, and it became the most important
organ for the Scandinavian Canadians during the last decade of the
nineteenth century.85 Around the turn of the century another paper,
sponsored by the Canadian government and aimed at attracting
Swedish immigrants to Canada, Svenska Canada T i d n i n g e n , was
founded. It soon became the most important Scandinavian language
paper in the country.8 6 As for strictly Norwegian-language papers,
the most important in Canada was Norrøna, founded in Winnipeg in
1910 and covering news, local as well as from Scandinavia.8 7 Norrøna
had the same editor as Svenska Canada T i d n i n g e n and was aimed at
attracting Norwegians to Canada. In both cases ads promoting immi­gration
and paid for by the Federal Department of Immigration and
Colonisation were included, and the Canadian government funded
their distribution in Scandinavia.8 8 The only other Norwegian-lan­guage
paper in Canada that lasted for some time was H y r d e n (The
shepherd), a Canadian organ for the Norwegian Lutheran Church in
Canada. It came into existence in 1924, but its Norwegian-language
content decreased with every year, and by 1949 it was an entirely
English-language paper, the name H y r d e n replaced with its English
translation, The Shepherd.69
Of all the Nordic immigrants to North America, the Icelanders
were the only group that made Canada their primary destination.
This is a crucial difference between the Icelanders and other Nordic
immigrants. The Icelanders were concentrated primarily in Manitoba
and were not under the influence of a larger "mother" community
south of the border, as was case with the other nationalities that
made up the Scandinavian Canadians. The majority of Icelanders in
North America lived in Canada and had established two papers in
the 1880s that reflected the political divisions within their commu­nity:
the conservative H e i m s k r i n g l a and the liberal Lögberg.90 The
papers merged in 1959 and now appear as the weekly Lögberg-
H e i m s k r i n g l a .
While the Icelandic press in Canada covered many aspects of life
and politics in Canada, the Scandinavian press in Canada was prima-
167
rily dedicated to practical concerns of their ethic community. The
expressed ambition was to inform the newly arrived immigrants about
the new country and its institutions, and to help them establish
themselves in Canada. To integrate the Scandinavians into Canadian
society was never a strongly emphasized goal.9 1 Since political, liter­ary,
and cultural issues were already covered by the Scandinavian-
American journals and papers that reached Canada in large num­bers,
the Scandinavian-Canadian press covered but a narrow niche,
dealing primarily with practical concerns related to life in the new
land.
One of the arguments for having a separate Scandinavian-Cana­dian
language press was that the Scandinavian-American papers did
not know and did not report about Canadian events and condi­tions.
9 2 Therefore, a study of the Scandinavian papers in Canada
gives a good insight into the Scandinavian community around the
turn of the century and sheds light on the inter-ethnic relations of
western Canadian society at the turn of the century. The Danes,
Norwegians, and Swedes arrived in a society with a rigorous ethnic
pecking order. As mentioned above,, they were near the top of that
pecking order, in the same category as other Germanic immigrants.
Above them were the Anglo-Saxons and the Icelanders, who, due
often to a command of the language and better organization were
able to advance more quickly in the new country. There was some
resentment among the Scandinavians regarding the fact that the
English and the Scots controlled the political system and held all the
important political posts.93 The Scandinavians also shared many of
the prejudices about Anglo-Saxon immigrants from the lower strata
of the economic spectrum. They often felt that the British immi­grants
had a superior attitude, and that they refused to take simpler
jobs. Another widely held impression was that the British immigrants
were rhetorically superior, but worked less hard than the Scandina­vians.
9 4 Ironically, the same complaints that the Scandinavians had
about the British were sometimes applied to Scandinavians as well.
Olaf Linck, a Danish writer traveling through Danish Canada in the
1920s, encountered these attitudes among Canadian "natives." For
example, when he asked a Calgary immigration officer about what
he thought of the Danes, the official answered that "the Danes are
168
among the best, but there are also many bad individuals among
them." He also observed that some Danes, arriving without money
or means to finance themselves, considered themselves too good to
do physical labor on the farms and wanted white-collar jobs. The
worst kind, the immigration officer said, where those who came
without being sufficiently versed in the English language, but who
nevertheless thought that there ought to be some jobs open for them
with the government, "once they had shown Canada the honour of
showing up."95
Relations with other ethnic groups, linguistically and culturally
less kindred than the Anglo-Saxons, Icelanders, and Germans, were
very limited and colored by suspicion and prejudice. Very few Scan­dinavians
had actually met Ukrainians, Jews, or Chinese before arriv­ing
in North America. They arrived from highly homogenous ethnic
societies. One might expect, therefore, that they would be untainted
by racial prejudices. Nevertheless, the image of "the other" was very
strong among the Scandinavian immigrants, who very quickly found
their place in the pecking order. If the Icelanders and British annoy­ingly
placed themselves above the Scandinavians, there was a row of
people beneath them. Perhaps the best-known Scandinavian-Cana­dian
writer, Sven Delblanc, who was born in Swan River, Manitoba
in 1931, describes these hierarchies in his semi-autobiographical book
Kaanans land.9 63
Power and money and land determined honor and rank
in Minitonas, as in all other societies on earth. In case of
equal conditions, origin and race were the most important.
The native-born Canadians were the most prestigious, par­ticularly
if they stemmed from the British Isles. Somewhat
less prestigious were the Scandinavians, the simple cousins of
the Brittons, equal with the Dutch and Germans in rank.
The Scandinavians had a reputation of being naïve, perhaps
because they could easily be fooled in business transactions.
The Irish were rather rare. They preferred the allegiance to
the English crown by joining their countless co-patriots in the
United States. Below Germans and Scandinavians were the
Southern Europeans, "dagos" and "wops" and whatever they
169
were called, even further down were the motley crew of
eastern Europeans—"ruskies," "bohunks," "polkas," a multi­tude
of people who often were simply referred to as "Galicians."
The negroes were few and far between and worked mostly as
train conductors, and it was therefore possible to brag about
not having any "negro problems" or prejudices. . . . The
Jewish problem was something that belonged to the big cit­ies,
the "yellow peril" mostly to be found on the West Coast,
and Mr. Lee was the sole representative of his race in Minitonas.
He was diligent and proper, always polite and delightful, but
nevertheless strangely isolated. He sought nobody's company
and nobody sought his, he stuck to his wife and the cafe. . . .
He stoically attended his till and did not display any annoy­ance
when the children gathered outside his window to sing
"Ching, Chong, Chinaman, make a lot of money."9 6b
If Canada had less of a class-based society than the Scandinavian
countries, the immigrant communities of the prairies instead had a
certain racial hierarchy, which was taken for granted.
Sven Delblanc's father, Sigurd D e l b l a n c , from. Helge N e l s o n , The Swedes and the
Swedish Settlements in North America, 356
170
British and American immigrants were regarded as the
most desirable, followed by northern and western Europeans,
central and eastern Europeans and then by Jews and southern
Europeans. . . . Last were the blacks and the Asian immi­grants
. . . who were considered inferior and unassimilable.9 6c
If the Scandinavians had grown up with a clear stereotype of the
Jew, then the Galician Ukrainians and the Asians must have been
peoples to whom they were wholly unaccustomed. Yet, writers in the
Swedish press soon found words to describe what they saw as strange
people from cultures with which they were not familiar and which
they could not understand. In their attempts to get accepted into
mainstream society, the Scandinavians internalized the majority society's
attitudes toward the Slavs, for example. George Fisher Chapman
wrote an article that received much attention when it was published
in The C a n a d i a n M a g a z i n e 1909. He had only praise for Icelanders
and Scandinavians, but heaped scorn on the Galicians. Chapman
emphasized that the Galicians were a particular problem. They are
depicted as the unhappy products of a civilization one thousand
years behind the Canadian who, therefore, cannot share the Cana­dian
respect for life and freedom, nor the Canadian sense of cleanli­ness.
Chapman saw no other solution than subjecting the Galicians
to surveillance and pushed for strong missionary efforts by the Protes­tant
churches in the Galician community. Already, he noted, the
Galicians had been diverted from the "fakir priests" of the Orthodox
Church, but there was still much work left to be done.97
The Scandinavian-Canadian press, perhaps echoing the jargon of
their community, referred to the Galicians as "sheepskin-clad
Galicians," or simply "sheepskins."98 Often, in reports covering Ukrai­nians
and eastern Europeans, Canada used a derogatory or sarcastic
language. Comments such as " A smaller party of 'sheepskins' arrived
yesterday," or that immigration officer Åkerlind "had the pleasure (?)
of accompanying" a larger party of Ukrainians from Ottawa to
Winnipeg.9 9 The same was true for Svenska Canada T i d n i n g e n . It
quite often reported about Galician activities, and the news always
reflected negatively upon the Eastern European immigrants.
171
A report on immigration to Winnipeg covered in Svenska Canada
T i d n i n g e n in 1913 may serve as an illustration of prevailing attitudes.
The report recounted how recent immigrants were housed in two
different buildings, a newer one for Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians
and an older one for eastern Europeans. The paper contrasts the
cleanliness and order in the newer building with the situation in the
eastern-European barracks and explains how it was not easy to keep
the latter group's barracks decently clean, as the tenants "are not
used to any exaggerated cleanliness."1 0 0 The immigration authorities
have to clean and disinfect the barracks of the Galicians often, since
"many of their guests do not come alone but are accompanied by
friends whose name we perhaps do not need to mention." To counter
their dubious sexual habits, the immigration authorities attempted to
segregate the Galicians along gender lines.1 0 1 The Swedish press con­trasted
what they saw as the unpleasant racial features of the Slavs
with the racial purity of the Scandinavians. The Swedes, with "their
powerful figures with their open, honest facial characteristics, stand
in sharp contrast to the Slavic elements who well represented also
here."1 0 2
The Jews were even less appealing to the Scandinavian press.
Canada referred to the Jew as an aesthetically "not too enviable
figure."1 0 3 Svenska Canada T i d n i n g e n repeatedly referred to the Jews
as "undesirable"1 0 4 and "an inferior race."1 0 5 Another group the Scan­dinavians
felt alienated from were the Asians. In an untranslatable
quote from 26 April 1905, Svenska Canada T i d n i n g e n referred to the
Chinese as "stadens snedögda tvättbjörnar"106 hinting at their predomi­nance
within the laundry business.107 Through internalizing prevalent
prejudices the Scandinavians found a comfortable way to integrate,
but not fully assimilate, into Canadian society. By emphasizing the
foreign nature of the "other," rather than actively seeking to assimi­late,
many Scandinavians found a comfortable way to acceptance
and integration.
Given their similarities to the British, as the Scandinavians as­similated
into the Canadian mainstream they soon became widely
regarded as a part of the Protestant establishment, sometimes referred
to as the Anglo-Scandinavian majority.1 0 8 Common prejudices among
the Northern European-Canadians soon crystallized into political en-
172
gagement. In the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan drew support from many
Scandinavian settlers, worried about the influx of foreign racial and
religious elements into western Canada. One of the demands of the
Klan was that immigration to the prairie be limited to "trained"
Scandinavian and northern European immigrants.1 0 9 This agenda fell
on fertile ground among a Scandinavian population weary of the
increasing influx of French-speaking Roman Catholics and Slavs,
who were thought to avoid assimilation or simply deemed unassimilable
inferiors or traitors to their Protestant country.1 10
The Scandinavian papers also tell us something about the rela­tions
between the Scandinavians and the dominant Anglo-Saxon
community. Over the decades, these very much followed the ebb
and flow of the political tides. One of the more sensitive issues was
the Boer War, which caused much indignation among the Scandina­vians.
This was reflected in the pages of the local press. The pro-Boer
sentiments were strong all over continental Europe, but particularly
so in Germany and the Nordic countries.1 1 1 Many of the Scandina­vian-
American farmers who relocated to the Canadian prairie came
after living in mixed German-Scandinavian communities in the
American Midwest, where pro-Boer sentiments ran strong. Canada
contrasted Victorian British aggression with the humane way in which
the Boers treated their prisoners of war.1 1 2 It emphasized that this was
Britain's war, not Canada's.1 1 3 Admiring reports described the heroic
efforts of Scandinavian volunteers on the side of the Boers. The fact
that more Swedish than Norwegian and Danish volunteers had been
killed in the Battle of Bloemfontein was presented in nationalistic
colors. By their sacrificial deaths for the Boers, the Swedes had "dem­onstrated
their heroic reputation" ("häfdat sitt r y k t e f o r h j e l t e m o d " ) . m
The Scandinavians and their newspaper, which had long shown Lib­eral
sympathies, openly disagreed with Prime Minister Laurier's com­promise
decision to send Canadian volunteers to fight on the British
side in the war.1 15
The Scandinavian concerns regarding Anglo-Saxon and English-only
nationalism in Canada ran high during the Boer War, but they
peaked in both Canada and the United States during World War I.
The outbreak of hostilities in Europe brought Canada into the con­flict
almost immediately, while the United States entered the war
173
only in 1917. There was an initial wartime Scandinavian-Canadian
jealousy toward the Scandinavian-American community, which lived
in a country that stayed until April 1917. There was also much
dissatisfaction about the openly pro-German stance of much of the
Swedish-American press. This caused many bitter comments in Svenska
Canada T i d n i n g e n . 1 1 6 During the Boer War differing opinions regard­ing
the war effort had been tolerated—the Canadian involvement
was not that great, and the Liberal government under Laurier had
reservations regarding Canadian participation. A t the time of the
outbreak of World War I the situation was different. The conflict was
seen as a fight for world hegemony and cultural survival. The Scandi­navian
press in Canada, in sharp contrast to that of the United
States, felt the pressure to keep a low profile i n order to avoid
unwanted attention or accusations of limited patriotism. Many Swedes
in Winnipeg participated in a 3,000-man-strong meeting of loyalty
arranged by "The Naturalised Citizens" on 15 September 1914. The
Swedes made sure to have their participation noticed, as the Swedish
Royal anthem, Kungssången, was played twice.1 1 7 The author of an
editorial in Svenska Canada T i d n i n g e n underlined the Swedes'
"Canadianness" and joined the chorus of war supporters when he
wrote, "As long as he is walking on Canadian soil and eating Cana­dian
bread," the Swede must forget his old sympathies for the Ger­mans.
1 1 8 Sympathy for the Germans and identification with them
were things that many immigrants had brought with them from the
old country, but pro-German sentiment ran even stronger among
some Scandinavian-Americans (especially Swedish-Americans), who
had brought with them a positive attitude toward their former Ger­man
neighbors on the American prairies.1 1 9 Once again the influence
from the Scandinavian mother community south of the border was
strong.
This time, however, the ties across the 49t h parallel turned out to
be a burden and source of discomfort for the Scandinavian Canadi­ans.
In an attempt to show loyalty toward the British flag, Svenska
Canada T i d n i n g e n started an aggressive campaign against their much
larger competitors south of the border. A few Swedish-American
papers were particularly singled out for their pro-German sentiments.
Soon after the outbreak of the war, the editor of Svenska Canada
174
Posten went so far as to demand an outright boycott of the Minne­apolis-
based Svenska A m e r i k a n s k a P o s t e n , 1 1 0 the second largest Swed­ish
language newspaper outside Sweden.1 2 1 Later in 1914, M i n n e s o ta
S t a t s T i d n i n g was accused of being " t y s k g a l e n " (German-crazed). In
March 1915 the editor of Svea of Worchester, Massachusetts, was
ironically and angrily singled out as "His Majesty, Kaiser Wilhelm II's
special envoy to the United States."122 A n important question is to
what extent this anti-German attitude was popular among the read­ers.
Lars Ljungmark, who has written the only extensive book on
Swedish immigration to Canada, points out that "there are many
evidences that suggest that Svenska Canada T i d n i n g e n experienced,
or perhaps rather was forced to experience the risk of disloyal letters
to their editor as a threat to its very existence."1 2 3 Much points in
that direction. In April 1917, after the United States entered the
war, the paper declared that no discussion about the war would be
allowed in the letters to the editor section.1 24
The wartime frenzy in Canada targeted anyone not British and
took somewhat ludicrous expressions. As the Swedes were consid­ered
pro-German, they were subjected to discrimination. Many "aliens,"
among them Canadian citizens, lost their jobs, were deported, or had
their lives threatened.1 2 5 Certainly, the Scandinavians suffered less
from this than other minorities, such as Germans, Ukrainians, and
Hungarians.1 2 6 One of the groups for which the war brought about
the most radical changes were the Germans. They were forced to see
how their community was depreciated from being a group of "worthy
immigrants," becoming reevaluated and suddenly regarded as "unde­sirable
aliens."1 2 7 World War I had a strong and negative impact on
the Scandinavian communities in North America.1 2 8 Ironically, the
impact of the constant anti-German war propaganda and the pro-
British sentiments in Canada reached its peak immediately after the
war, with many wounded and exhausted soldiers returning from Eu­rope.
In the summer of 1919 the W i n n i p e g T e l e g r a p h , the largest paper
in the city, declared that they would stop using the term A n g l o - S a x o n
and instead use the term A n g l o - C e l t i c , to keep the proud name of
their people unpolluted by any associations with an insignificant
German tribe.1 29
The year 1919 was a violent and polarizing year. Western Canada
175
had seen much unrest during the hard economic times that followed
upon the end of the war. January 1919 saw bloody riots, as returning
soldiers to Winnipeg roamed through the city, breaking store win­dows,
forcing themselves into private homes and clubs in the immi­grant
quarters, and compelling anyone who could be taken for an
immigrant to kiss Union Jack.1 3 0 None of them was charged.1 3 1 Pa­tience
ran out as returning, disillusioned soldiers were unable to find
employment, while they found that many "alien" immigrants had
jobs. Economic hardships and political strife caused the Winnipeg
General Strike. The city was shaken by riots, culminating in the
"Bloody Sunday" of June 21, when mostly immigrant striking workers
clashed with the police, leaving two dead and many wounded.1 32
During these hard times many Swedish and Norwegian Ameri­cans
returned to the United States. The years 1914-1917 particularly
saw many Swedes and Norwegians re-immigrating south of the bor­der
to a neutral United States, still at peace. The peace in the
United States and the sharply contrasting British xenophobia in
Canada worked as strong pull- and push-factors. O n the other hand,
this did not affect the smaller Danish community, which even in­creased
somewhat in numbers during this period. The same is true for
the small Finnish community.1 3 3 The Icelanders, who did not have a
"mother community" of size south of the border, were unaffected. In
the end, migration across the border did little good for the Scandina­vians,
as the United States entered the war in 1917.
As anti-German frenzy and xenophobic paranoia swept both
countries, the Scandinavians soon felt the pressure to tone down or
suppress displays of ethnic pride. Their languages and cultures were
similar to those of the Germans, with whom they were often con­fused.
In the case of German-Americans, the wartime reaction against
them was so strong that it "nearly destroyed the cultural and institu­tional
base of the German populations" in North America.1 3 4
Since September 2001, we have been painfully reminded of how
easily nationalist sentiment can be fanned and how blind fury can fall
upon certain ethic targets. One of the more curious examples of this
came when the United States Congress passed a resolution to re­name
French fries and French toast freedom fries and freedom toast in
the Capitol's restaurant, as the Bush administration's push for war met
176
French-led opposition in the U N Security Council.1 3 5 This echo of
1917 did not compare to the nationalistic fury that accompanied the
last wave of renaming dishes with dangerously un-American-sound­ing
names during World War I. For example, sauerkraut was re­named
l i b e r t y cabbage in an Orwellian attempt to strengthen morale
on the home front,136 and the war also led to self-censoring and
downplaying of expressions of culture that could cause suspicions of
disloyalty toward the new country. The Germans had been the larg­est
and probably the best-organized ethnic community in the United
States prior to the war.1 3 7 The war brought a severe crackdown not
only on the German community and press. It hit the Scandinavians
hard as well. Laws, aimed at the Germans, forbade newspapers to be
published in foreign languages or meetings and even church services
to be held in languages other than English.1 3 8 This meant that older
Scandinavians, who had limited skills in the English language, were
suddenly unable to hear the words of God in their native languages.
Many old immigrants were effectively turned out of the pioneer
churches they had built.1 3 9 Occasionally, even telephone services
would disconnect customers who spoke in a foreign language or used
English badly, and this affected some Scandinavians.1 4 0 To a high
degree, these nativist laws had impacts on the Scandinavian press, as
many censors were unable to read papers in languages other than
English. The similarities between the Scandinavian and German lan­guages,
and the fact that many Scandinavian-language papers printed
in F r a k t u r s c h r i f t , or Gothic type, caused many monolingual English-speakers
to confuse Scandinavians with Germans.
It was not uncommon that the anti-German frenzy hit Scandina­vians
as well. There were many Scandinavians who were driven out
of town by Anglo-Saxons or suffered other forms of harassment for
being confused with Germans or simply because of their refusal to
become anti-German.1 4 1 Most Scandinavians, including Scandina­vian-
American congressmen, had been strong proponents of peace
and U.S. neutrality in the war. When the United States entered the
war, many Scandinavian Americans were frustrated and saddened.
At a public discussion in a North Dakota farming community, a
Norwegian farmer defended his state's Norwegian-born Senator Asle
Gronna and Wisconsin's Robert LaFollette for daring to vote against
177
the U.S. entry to the war:
It will cost us many human lives and millions of dollars
before we get out of this war. It is the munition makers and
the great capitalists who are now waving the Stars and Stripes
and calling us immigrants hyphenated Americans . . . they
have worked up a veritable hysteria for 100-percent Ameri­canism
and contempt and suspicion against us who know
two or more languages, and were born on the other side of
the ocean. . . . I have nothing to say in favor of Kaiser
Wilhelm . . . but that my only son has been drafted to fight
the German people, that wounds my very heart.1 42
In both Canada and America, the strongest reactions against
perceived alien cultures in their societies came during the xenopho­bic
backlash and Red Scare that followed the war. Native-born Ca­nadian
and American nationalists believed that the only thing that
could save the purity of the Anglo-Saxon culture was a total Ameri­canization
and Canadianization of their foreign-language-speaking
minorities.1 4 3 In 1919 the first so-called Americanization Conference
met, sponsored by the Department of the Interior in Washington.
This marked the beginning of a sharp suppression of almost all for­eign
languages used in the United States.1 44
In their quest to Americanize and Canadianize their foreign-born
populations, the governments of the United States and Canada were
particularly successful in regards to the Scandinavians, who already
were sufficiently similar to the Anglo-Saxons in regards to race, reli­gion,
and language. Several decades of discriminatory provincial leg­islation
aimed at the use of languages other than the established
English and French left a deep impact on Canadian students of
Scandinavian descent. The use of foreign languages in public schools
was strictly prohibited in Canada, even during recesses and lunch-times.
1 4 5 The use thereof led to repercussions and punishment.
Saskatchewan, home to many of the Canadian Scandinavians, out­lawed
foreign-language teaching during school hours in 1919.1 4 6 How­ever,
there were not many schools to which the legislation could
apply. Only five (possibly seven) schools in Saskatchewan were teaching
178
From W. A . Mackintosh and W. L . G . Joerg, eds., Canadian Frontiers of Settle­ment,
Vol. 7, Group Settlement: Ethnic Communities in Western Canada (Toronto:
M a c M i l l a n , 1 9 3 6 ) , 1
179
F r o m Helge Nelson, The Swedes and the Swedish Settlements in North America,
340
180
Norwegian at the time of the introduction of the ban.1 47
However, the monolingual policy of the government did not go
unopposed. In the 1970s the Ukrainians in Alberta conducted a
successful campaign aimed at having their language approved as an
elective in public schools.1 4 9 The Scandinavians were not sufficiently
organized to be able to launch a similar campaign in a successful
way.1 4 9 By this time, they were firmly integrated into Canadian soci­ety
and did not appear to find this a battle worth fighting. The high
standard of education and the secure position of their languages in
their native countries made the Scandinavian Canadians less eager
to promote their languages in the Diaspora.1 5 0 Another influencing
factor was, no doubt, that many of the Scandinavian immigrants to
Canada came as serial migrants from the United States and had
already adopted English as their primary language.151
Speaking Scandinavian languages was, therefore, limited to the
privacy of the home, and also something that declined with every
generation. Canadian government policy was highly effective. The
second- and third-generation Scandinavian Canadians were quickly
and firmly assimilated into mainstream society, speeded further by
the wartime pressure.152 The Scandinavians learned English quicker
and spoke English better than almost all other immigrant groups in
Canada. By 1931, only 3.1 percent of the Norwegians and 2.9
percent of the Swedes in Canada could not speak English. In con­trast,
29.8 percent of Japanese and Chinese immigrants were unable
to speak English at the same time.1 5 3 The rapid disappearance of the
Scandinavian languages in Canada was lamented by many Scandina­vians
of the original pioneer generation. Gulbrand Loken cites an
original Norwegian settler in Canada, who commented on the reced­ing
of her native language. Her attitude is somewhat representative
of the first-generation Scandinavian immigrants:
I didn't have much trouble learning to speak English, or
adapting to this country. My husband had more difficulty. He
learned his English working in a sawmill in the States. It
seems that the Norwegian traditions have been difficult to
carry on. I have kept up my Norwegian baking. I feel it is
too bad that the young people show no interest in learning
181
to speak Norwegian or carrying on the traditions.1 54
Even more reluctant to surrender the Norwegian language was
the Norwegian Lutheran Church in Canada.1 5 5 For centuries, the
Lutheran churches had been the primary bearers and upholders of
culture in Scandinavia. They were intertwined with education and
responsible for ensuring that at least a minimum level of literacy was
maintained among the population.
In the Lutheran tradition, all children were taught early to read
and write. A l l Norwegian children had to be confirmed, and that
meant Christian instruction in the Bible, Bible history, catechism,
and the hymnal. This began in the home, was continued at school,
and climaxed in two years of intensive memorization and review
from about age fourteen to sixteen. This was the period often re­ferred
to as "reading for the minister." Upon confirmation, a youth
was accepted as a full member of the church and treated as an
adult.1 5 6
The state church of Norway was opposed to emigration from
Norway, and therefore Canadian Norwegians had troubles finding
enough ministers for their communities, since there were very few
Lutheran ministers among the immigrants.1 5 7 As in the case of the
Swedish immigrants to Canada, not only did many of the Scandina­vian-
speaking ministers come from a mother church in the United
States, but also their liturgies, hymnals, and translations of the Bible
d i d . 1 5 8 The Lutheran churches had strong positions among the Scan­dinavian
Canadians and were deeply involved in education. The
Scandinavian Lutheran churches in Canada set up a large number of
schools. It is estimated, for example, that the Norwegian Lutheran
church schools in North America alone had a total attendance of
about 150,000 students.1 5 9 Also, on the initiative of Norwegian
Lutherans, two colleges were established in the Canadian west: Camrose
Lutheran College in Alberta (1911) and Outlook College in
Saskatchewan (1915).1 6 0 Besides promoting Lutheranism and educa­tion
in general, one of the primary goals of these colleges was to
promote and "preserve our Norwegian language as long as possible."1 61
There was a feeling among many Norwegians in North America that
"our day is in danger of losing its soul in the midst of the many things
182
that engross our attention."1 6 2 The situation was similar among the
Swedish-Canadians. The Lutheran Church was the institution that
kept the traditional values alive. As a Scandinavian-American im­port,
firmly rooted in the prevalent religious and political attitudes of
a previous wave of emigrants to America, it was a promoter of a
"frozen" immigrant culture. In many ways, it preserved and kept the
values that had been dominant in Sweden at the time of the emigra­tion,
during the 1860s-1900s. These Swedish-American immigrants
of an earlier generation often felt that there was a lack of Swedish
national consciousness in the Swedish-Canadian community, espe­cially
in relation to the situation among the Swedes in the United
States.1 6 3
One cultural expression that was particularly strong among
Lutherans in Sweden was the historical importance given to the warrior
king Gustavus Adolphus. However, even as the centrality of Gustavus
Adolphus as a symbol for Swedishness in Sweden and among Swed­ish
Canadians began to decline in the mid-twentieth century, the
Swedish Lutheran Church in Canada continued to hold his name in
high regard.1 6 4 As late as 1989, the publication celebrating the cen­tennial
of the New Stockholm Lutheran Church still depicted Gustavus
Adolphus in the same heroic way he was usually portrayed in the late
1800s.
Gustavus II Adolphus succeed his father to the throne in 1611.
He was a staunch defender of the Lutheran faith and fought in
Germany to save the Lutherans there from being crushed by the
armed forces of the Roman-Hapsburg empire. His victory in 1631
blocked this Roman Catholic countermove in Germany. He rejected
the aims of those who would compel all Roman Catholics and Cal­vinists
to adopt the Augsburg Confession. He would guard the evan­gelical
faith, but he would not deprive any person of the freedom of
his own religious convictions. In his foreign relations he was a true
champion of the liberty of conscience.1 65
As an illustration of the centrality and strength of the church
among the Scandinavians in Canada, focusing on church attendance
shows sharply different trends between Scandinavians in Canada and
in the home countries. Not only did 90 percent of the first- and
second-generation Scandinavian Canadians oppose exogamy outside
183
the Lutheran religion,1 6 6 church attendance increased with every
generation, suggesting a development toward social conservatism similar
to that of previous Scandinavians to the United States.1 67
As H . Arnold Barton has pointed out, the Scandinavians in
America were considerably more conservative in outlook and lifestyle
than the homeland Scandinavians. "Surely many a Swedish-Ameri­can
farm family in, say, Minnesota or Washington State lived a life
closer to what they or their forebears had left than did their relatives
in Stockholm or Norrköping."1 6 8 The conservatism of the Swedish
Americans was strong also in relation to the Swedish Canadians. The
Swedish-Canadian attitude toward the Swedish Americans was in
many ways similar to that of the homeland Swedes.1 6 9 There was
sometimes a feeling among homeland Swedes as well as Swedish
Canadians that the Swedish Americans revealed a sense of superior­ity
over them.1 7 0 Correspondingly, there was an inferiority complex
among the Swedish Canadians and the recently arrived Swedish im­migrants
to Canada toward the Swedish Americans.1 7 1 Not only
were they already familiar with the English language and North Ameri­can
society, they were also economically better off and had often a
higher level of education.1 7 2 The Swedish Americans did not consti­tute
a majority of the Swedes in Canada, but they were a visible and
influential minority.1 7 3 Importantly, they soon dominated the cultural
life in the community. Religion and church activities were central to
the activities of the community, and here all ministers in Winnipeg
were, without exception, Swedish Americans. The majority of the
professionals, be they teachers, doctors, dentists, journalists, or law­yers,
were from the United States as well. Nevertheless, the contacts
between the Swedes in Canada and the United States were mostly
cordial and uncomplicated.1 74
The political differences became more pronounced during the
decade prior to World War I, as the immigrants arriving to Canada
directly from Sweden often were politically radical and belonged to
another wave of immigrants than the older, religious generation of
Swedish Americans.1 7 5 The latter "tended to support block settle­ment
isolationism, ethnic traditionalism, and religious conservatism."1 76
Despite the efforts of Scandinavian churches and organizations to
keep their languages alive, the children and grandchildren of the
184
immigrants soon forgot the language of their parents. In striking
contrast to some other ethnic groups, Scandinavian Canadians have
tended to feel that it is possible to maintain a general interest in the
"Scandinavian connection" without maintaining an ability to speak a
Scandinavian language. The proportion of the Scandinavian-origin
population in Saskatchewan claiming an ability to speak a Scandina­vian
language declined from 59 percent in 1941 to 40 percent in
1951, 28 percent in 1961, and 20 percent in 1971; by 1971 hardly 1
percent actually used such a language as a primary language spoken
in the home. The rate of decline was even more drastic in the north-central
region, where our detailed survey was conducted: from 78
percent in 1941 to 48 percent in 1951, 35 percent in 1961, and 27
percent in 1971.1 77
Ironically, the conscious government policy to encourage immi­grant
populations to assimilate linguistically were successful primarily
with "preferred" immigrant groups from northern and western Eu­rope,
while it was less successful in regards to the "non-preferred"
groups such as the Slavs, for which it was initially intended. W i t h the
decline of the use of their languages, Canadian and American Scan­dinavians
made religion their primary ethnic marker.
With the Danes the situation was somewhat similar. Due to the
gender imbalance among Danes in America, many Danish men chose
German-American women as their partners, followed by Swedish
Americans and Norwegian Americans. Nevertheless, very few mar­ried
outside their religion. Of the Scandinavians in Canada, the
Icelanders were the most segregated, the Danes the least.1 7 8 Only 57
percent of second-generation Danish Americans were of purely Dan­ish
decent.1 7 9 One reason why many Danes and other Scandinavians
married outside their ethnic groups was the gender imbalance among
the Scandinavian immigrants that lasted well until the middle of the
twentieth century. As late as 1941, the percentage of Norwegian males in
Canada exceeded the number of females by 156 percent.180 This gender
imbalance was perceived as a big problem for many first-generation Scan­dinavian
males in both Canada and the United States. A young Danish
immigrant wrote thus in a letter home from the New World:
What we miss most are the girls! There is nothing but
185
half-grown children here. There are a lot of old bachelors
here just waiting for the girls to get old enough to marry. The
innocent lasses don't even celebrate their fifteenth birthday
before ten old bachelors in their thirties are on their knees
proposing to them. But the girls choose those who have the
most grey hair, so there is no point in a young man proposing
here. If an immigrant from Fyn writes home to his girlfriend,
he can never be certain that a Jew has not gotten to her first
and snatched her away right before his nose.1 81
Nevertheless, as language slowly became replaced by religion as
primary ethnic marker, the opposition to ethnic exogamy became
less significant than the opposition to religious exogamy. In a survey
among Scandinavian Canadians in Saskatchewan conducted in the
1980s, 52.3 percent were opposed to the former and a full 77.0
percent to the latter.1 8 2 This clearly illustrates the powerful ascent of
religion as ethnic marker.
CONCLUSIONS
The Scandinavian Canadians were latecomers to the prairies.
They were a diverse group of arrivals from the Scandinavian coun­tries,
including political radicals and teetotalers, Icelandic fishermen,
Norwegian forest workers, Danish dairy farmers, and conservative
Scandinavian-American Midwestern farmers. The Scandinavian-Ca­nadian
community has long stood in the shadow of the much larger
and vital Scandinavian-American community. As proficiency in the
Scandinavian languages died off with the second and third genera­tions
of Scandinavian Canadians, "ethnic" religion replaced language
as the symbol for and carrier of Scandinavian identity. The Scandina­vians
were sufficiently closely akin to the British in race, language,
and religion to assimilate quickly, while keeping certain characteris­tics,
such as Lutheranism and ethnic cooking. By emphasizing the
dissimilarity of "the other," in this case the Slavs, Jews, and Asians,
rather than pointing out their own closeness to the British, the Scan­dinavian
Canadians showed that they belonged to the WASP major­ity
while still being able to distinguish themselves as a distinct group.
186
In their strong emphasis upon religious identity the Scandinavian
Canadians have followed the Scandinavian-American pattern, which
differs sharply from that of the homeland Scandinavians, who are the
most secularized people in the world, particularly the Swedes and the
Danes. The Scandinavian-Canadian community was, to some ex­tent,
a community of chain migrants, or at least the dominating
figures within the community were, as pastors, religious denomina­tions,
books, newspapers, and social clubs all came predominantly
from the United States.
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Kyba, Patrick. "Ballots and Burning Crosses—The Election of 1929." In Politics
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ENDNOTES
1. Elinor Berglund Barr, The Swedish Experience in Canada: A n Annotated Bibliog­raphy,
Meddelanden från Svenska Emigrantistitutet, no. 4 (Växjö: 1991), 5.
2. Mauri A . Jalava, "The Scandinavians as a Source of Settlers for the
Dominion of Canada: The First Generation, 1867-1897," Scandinavian-Cana­dian
Studies I (1983), 4-
3. Francis C . Hardwick, Philip Moir, eds., The Return of the Vikings: Scandi­navians
in Canada, Canadian Culture Series (Vancouver, B.C.), 21.
4. Ibid., 21.
5. U l f Beijbom, Amerika, Amerika! En bok om utvandringen (Stockholm:
Natur och Kultur, 1977), 36.
6. Ibid., 62.
7. Ibid., 156,
8. Ibid., 157.
9a. Ibid.
9b. Helge Nelson, The Swedes and the Swedish Settlements in N o r t h America,
vol. 1 (Lund: Gleerups, 1943), 359. Per Anders Rudling, "Ukrainian Swedes in
Canada: Gammalsvenskby in the Swedish-Canadian Press, 1929-1931," Scandina­vian-
Canadian Studies 15 (2005-2006): 84-111. Folke Hedblom, "The
Gammalsvenskby People: Swedish-Canadian Immigrants From South Russia,"
The Swedish-American Historical Quarterly 34, no. 1 (January 1983): 32-48.
"Gammalsvenskbyborna, Canadian Website," http://www.svenskbyborna.com/
canadian%20site.htm (accessed 13 June 2006).
10. Lars Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg: Porten till prärien 1872-1940
(Växjö, Sweden: Emigrantinstitutets Vänner, 1994), 231.
11. Beijbom, 159.
12. Ibid.
13. Helge Nelson, Canada: Nybyggarlandet (Stockholm: A . B . Magn. Bergvalls
Förlag), 57.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., 174.
189
16. Beijbom, 162.
17. Ibid., 163.
18. H . O . Frimodt-Møller, Dansk Bosaettelse i Canada (Copenhagen: Dansk
Traktatselskabs Forlag, 1927), 18-19.
19. H . Arnold Barton, Scandinavian Roots, American Lives: Scandinavian Emigra­tion
to N o r t h America (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2000), 12.
20. Beijbom, 164-
21. Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, rev. ed. (Bos­ton:
Beacon Press, 1955), 170-200.
22. Jalava, 10
23. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 156.
24. Jalava, 3.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., 8-9.
28. Ibid., 8, 14.
29. Ibid., 3.
30. Ibid., 3.
31. M . C . Urquhart, ed., Historical Statistics of Canada (Toronto: The
Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd., 1965), 18; and Robert E. Park, The Immi­grant
Press and Its Control, Americanization Studies—The Acculturation of Im­migrant
Groups in American Society, ed. William S. Bernard, no. 7 (Montclair,
N.J.: Patterson Smith, 1971), 317.
32. S. J. Sommerville, "Early Icelandic Settlements in Canada," Papers Read
Before the Historical and Scientific Society of Manitoba (1945), 26.
33. Valerie Knowles, Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immi­gration
Policy, 1540-1990 (Toronto and Oxford: Dundurn Press, 1992), 51.
34. W. Kristjanson, "1875—Westward to Manitoba," The Icelandic Canadian
(Summer 1975): 19.
35. Jón K . Laxdal, "The Founding of New Iceland," The Icelandic Canadian
(Summer 1992): 197.
36. A l a n B. Anderson, "Scandinavian Settlements in Saskatchewan: Migra­tion
History and Changing Ethnocultural Identity," Scandinavian-Canadian Studies
2 (1986): 95.
37. Sommerville, 29.
38. Anderson, 95.
39. Sommerville, 26.
40. Ibid., 28.
41. Ethel Howard, ed., G i m l i Saga: The History of G i m l i , Manitoba (Altona,
Manitoba: Gimli Women's Institute, 1975) ,22.
42. Jalava, 7.
190
43. Ibid.
44. Kristjanson, 19.
45. Jalava, 7.
46. Ibid.
47. Frimodt-Møller, 28.
48. Jalava, 8, 13.
49. Frimodt-Møller, 28.
50. Jalava, 8.
51. Ibid.
52. Varpu Lindstöm-Best, "The impact of Canadian Immigration Policy on
Finnish Immigration, 1890-1978," Siirtolaisuus-Migration 8, no. 2 (1981): 7.
53. Anderson, 95.
54. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 44.
55. Ibid., 45.
56. Ibid., 47.
57. To give an idea of the size of the community of New Stockholm it can
be mentioned that the central point of the community, the New Stockholm
Lutheran Church, had 96 communicant members plus 56 children in 1922,
almost forty years after its establishment. Lundquist, 13.
58. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 31.
59. Sommerville, 34-
60. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 81.
61. Ibid., 51.
62. Ibid., 81.
63.Ibid.
64- U l f Beijbom, Introduction to Lars Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 5.
65. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 17.
66. Ibid., 41.
67. Lundquist, 8.
68. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 41, 42.
69. Loken, 137.
70. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 41.
71. Ibid., 67-68.
72. Ibid., 67.
73. Ibid., 43-44.
74. Ibid., 45, 68.
75. Ibid., 44.
76. Loken, 178.
77. Elinor Berglund Barr, The Scandinavian Home Society 1923-1993: A Place to
Meet, A Place to Eat (Thunder Bay, Ont.: Scandinavian Home Society, 1996), 12.
78. Idun Engberg, Danske nybyggere i Canadas skove (Copenhagen: Gyldendal,
191
1950), 84.
79. Irene Howard, Vancouver's Svenskar: A History of the Swedish Community
i n Vancouver (Vancouver, B.C.: Vancouver Historical Society, 1970), 44.
80. Vilhelm Moberg, Den okända släkten: En bok om svenskarna och Amerika
i går och i dag (Stockholm: Bokförlaget PAN/Norstedts, 1968), 104.
81. Beijbom, 221, quoting Alfred Söderström, B l i x t a r på Tidnings-Horisonten:
Samlade och Magasinerade (Warroad, Minn., 1910).
82. Gulbrand Loken, From Front to Frontier: A History of the Norwegians in
Canada (Toronto: The Canadian Publishers, 1980),168.
83. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 82-83.
84. Ibid., 83.
85. Ibid., 88.
86. Elinor Berglund Barr, "Swedish Immigration to Canada 1923-29: The Case
of Port Arthur, Ontario," Swedish-American Historical Quarterly 51, no. 2 (2000): 150.
87. Loken, 170.
88. Barr, "Swedish Immigration to Canada," 150-51.
89. Loken, 171-72.
90. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 56.
91. Ibid., 84.
92. Ibid., 83.
93. Loken, 169.
94. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 82.
95. Olaf Linck, Kanada, Det store fremtidsland: Fremtidsmulighederne og u d v a n d ­rede
landsmaends skaebner i Kanada (Copenhagen: E. Jespersens Forlag, 1926), 153.
96a. Sven Delblanc (1931-1992) remains one of the most popular writers
in Sweden. His experiences from Canada are described in Kanaans land
(Stockholm: Bonniers, 1985) and Agnar (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1993).
96b. Delblanc, Kanaans land, 74-75.
96c. Chris Hale, "Ethnic Minorities on the Canadian Prairies in the Writ­ings
of Aksel Sandemose and Sven Delblanc," Scandinavian-Canadian Studies 8
(1995): 42. Hale quotes Howard Palmer, "Prejudice and Discrimination," The
Canadian Encyclopaedia, 2d ed., Vol. 3 (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1988), 1,741.
97. George Fisher Chapman, "Winnipeg: The Melting Pot," The Canadian
Magazine, vol. 33, no. 5, September 1909.
98. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 82.
99. Ibid., quoting Canada, 20 and 27 April 1899.
100. Ibid., 157, quoting Svenska Canada Tidningen, 4 March 1913.
101. Ibid., 157-58, quoting Svenska Canada Tidningen, 11 March 1913.
102. "Kraftiga gestalter med sina öppna, ärliga drag, sticka bjärt av mot de
slaviska elementen som här även äro väl representerade." Ibid., 158, quoting
Sveaska Canada Tidningen, 7 August 1903.
192
103. En judes "föga avundsvärda gestalt." Ibid., quoting Canada, August 8,1902.
104. Ibid., quoting Svenska Canada Tidningen, 19 May 1905.
105. Ibid., quoting Svenska Canada Tidningen, 7 September 1910.
106. Literally, "the slentered-eyed raccoons of the city." The Swedish words
for "raccoon" is tvättbjörn (tvätt means "laundry," björn "bear").
107. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 158.
108. Patrick Kyba, "Ballots and Burning Crosses—The Election of 1929,"
in Politics in Saskatchewan, ed. Norman Ward and Duff Spafford (Regina, Uni­versity
of Saskatchewan: Longmans Canada Limited, 1968), 106.
109. Anderson, 98.
110. Kyba, 111.
111. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 87.
112. Ibid, 85, 159.
113. Ibid, 84.
114. Ibid, 87, quoting Canada, 15 February 1900.
115. Ibid.
116. Ibid, 201.
117. Ibid, 169.
118. Ibid, quoting Svenska Canada Tidningen, Ti September 1914-
119. Ibid.
120. Ibid.
121. Beijbom, 221.
122. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 169, quoting Svenska Canada
Tidningen, 14 October 1914 and 10 March 1915.
123. Ibid, 170.
124- Ibid, quoting Svenska Canada Tidningen, 25 April 1917.
125. Ibid, 165.
126. "Under the emergency powers of the War Measures Act, the federal
government began to intern enemy aliens suspected of being anything other
than peaceful and trustworthy residents of Canada. A total of 8,579 enemy
aliens were interned, of whom only 1,192 were Germans resident in Canada.
Some 5,954 internees were described as Austro-Hungarians, and the overwhelming
majority of these were almost certainly Ukrainians. . . . Some Ukrainians were in­terned
for attempting to enlist in the Canadian army!" O . W. Gerus and J. E. Rea, The
Ukrainians in Canada. (Ottawa: The Canadian Historical Association, 1985), 11.
127. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 165.
128. Strickton, 44.
129. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 165, quoting Winnipeg Telegraph, 10
June 1919.
130. Ibid.
131. Gerus and Rea, 11.
193
132. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 167.
133. Ibid., 168.
134. Arnold Strickton, "Ethnicity and Relations with 'the O l d Country':
Norwegians in Rural Wisconsin," in Minorities and Mother Country Imagery, So­cial
and Economic Papers No. 13, ed. Gerald L. Gold (St. John's: Institute of Social
and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1984), 43.
135. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, "Threats and Responses: Washington Talk; A n Order
of Fries, Please, But Do Hold the French," New York Times, 12 March 2003.
136. Strickton, 44-
137. Ibid., 43.
138. Ibid., 44.
139. Ibid.
140. Skårdal, Dorothy Burton, The Divided Heart (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1974), 308.
141. Ibid., 310-14.
142. Ibid., 310, quoting Hans Anderson Foss, Valborg (Decorah, Iowa, c.
1927), 140-41.
143. Ibid., 308.
144- Heinz Kloss, The American Bilingual Tradition (Rowley, Mass.: Newbury
House, 1977), 34.
145. Loken, 193.
146. Anderson, 103.
147. Ibid., 103, 110.
148. Jim Cummins, "Language and Canadian Multiculturalism: Research
and Politics," in Osvita: Ukrainian Bilingual Education, ed. Manoly R. Lupel
(Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 2005), 77-92.
149. Loken, 193.
150. Anderson, 103. The Ukrainians, by contrast, perceived that there was
a need to preserve and maintain their language, which they felt was under threat
in their homeland, Soviet Ukraine.
151. Ibid., 99.
152. Erik J. Friis, ed., The Scandinavian Presence i n N o r t h America (New
York: Harper's Magazine Press, 1976), 29.
153. Loken, 195
154- Ibid., 193, quoting the memoirs of Mrs. Laura Lerdall, Outlook,
Saskatchewan (Saskatchewan archives).
155. Ibid., 194.
156. Ibid., 130.
157. Ibid., 131.
158. Virgil Lundquist, A Century of Faith: A Brief Look at the Faith of Our Fathers
i n the Life of the New Stockholm Lutheran Church (Stockholm, Saskatchewan: The
194
Centennial Committee of New Stockholm Lutheran Church, 1989), 3.
159. O. M . Norlie, History of the Norwegian People (Minneapolis: Augsburg,
1921), 381.
160. Loken, 131.
161. Ibid, 156, 193.
162. Ibid, 132, quoting Lars W. Boe, President of St. Olaf College, Northfield,
Minnesota, 1937.
163. Ljungmark, Svenskarna Winnipeg, 117.
164. Ibid, 198.
165. Lundquist, 6.
166. Anderson, 106.
167. In his survey of Scandinavians in Saskatchewan, A l a n Anderson found
that "by generation, 69.2% of the first generation reported regular attendance,
compared to 82.4% of the second and 97.4% of the third! Thus our hypothesis
that regularity of attendance would decline with each new generation seemed to
be reversed." Ibid, 102.
168. H . Arnold Barton, A Folk Divided: Homeland Swedes and Swedish Ameri­cans
1840-1940 (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsalensis, 1994), 338.
169. Lars Ljungmark, "Swedes in Winnipeg up to the 1940s: Inter-Ethnic
Relations," in Swedish Life i n American Cities, ed. Dag Blanck and Harald Runblom
(Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets, Historie och Antikvitets Akademiens Konferenser,
1985), 60-61.
170. Barton, A Folk Divided, 337.
171. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 160, 201.
172. Ibid, 160.
173. For instance, in Winnipeg the Nordic-born population (Scandina­vians,
Finns, and Icelanders) constituted 5.2 percent in 1901 and 2.7 percent in
1911. If the U.S.-born Scandinavians were included, the numbers were 7.9 per­cent
in 1901 and 3.6 percent in 1911. Ibid, 96-97.
174. Ibid, 162.
175. Ibid, 117, 162.
176. Anderson, 101.
177. Ibid, 99.
178. Loken, 192.
179. Kristian Hvidt, Flugten til Amerika eller Drivkraefter i masseudvandringen
fra Denmark 1968-1914 (Århus: Universitetsforlaget, 1971), 314-15.
180. Loken, 197.
181. Fredrick Hale, ed, Danes i n N o r t h America (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1984), 47, quoting a letter, signed " A Happy Boy," sent from
Sanborn, Barnes Country, Dakota Territories, January 1888.
182. Anderson, 106.

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Scandinavians in Canada: A Community
in the Shadow of the United States
PER ANDERS RUDLING
n comparison with its southern neighbor, Scandinavian immigra­tion
into Canada has been given little attention. Scandinavians in
.Canada, and particularly in western Canada, constitute a fairly
significant immigrant group, yet the number of books and articles
published on the subject remains fairly small. This, in turn, reflects
the relatively weak sense of community and a separate identity among
the Scandinavian Canadians. Why is that the case? This article will
focus on the impacts of the large Scandinavian "mother" community
south of the border, and how the Scandinavians in Canada in matters
regarding culture, religion, and literature were heavily influenced by
the larger Scandinavian community in the United States.
One of the relatively few publications dedicated entirely to the
subject of Swedes in Canada, Elinor Berglund Barr's 1993 The Swed­ish
Experience in Canada: A n A n n o t a t e d B i b l i o g r a p h y , summarizes the
situation thus:
Clearly, Canadian scholarship stands in a disadvantaged
position. No university or discipline specializes in Swedish
studies after almost two decades of official multiculturalism.
And no single repository has a mandate to collect either
published works, documents, or artifacts reflecting the Swed­ish
experience in Canada.1
One reason for this has been that the Swedes, and especially the
Norwegians, have been "invisible" in the ethnic mosaic of Canada.2
PER ANDERS R U D L I N G holds an M . A . in Russian from Uppsala University,
Sweden, and an M.A. in history f r o m San Diego State University, and is completing
his P h . D . in history at the University of A l b e r t a . While his doctoral dissertation pertains
to Belarus, his current research is on identity issues, diasporas, and nationalism.
152
They were latecomers to the country and very similar to the Anglo-
Saxons in customs and culture. While this "invisibility" has certainly
been an asset to the Scandinavians in certain ways, it has also left a
poorly organized Scandinavian-Canadian community, with a weak
sense of identity of its own.
Scandinavian emigration to Canada began later than the emigra­tion
to the United States. It also never approached the size of the
Scandinavian exodus to the U.S. These differences may be partially
explained by the extensive system of prepaid passages to the United
States and the relative ignorance of Canada in Scandinavia at the
time of the most intense period of emigration.3 When serious Cana­dian
recruitment efforts got underway in the 1880s, most of the
potential emigrants in western and northern Europe had already been
recruited to North America—and most of them had gone to the
United States.4
If one looks solely at Swedish emigration to the U.S., 1846 is
often regarded as the starting point. It was then that the self-ap­pointed
prophet Erik Jansson from Biskopskulla, Uppland, Sweden,
led a movement of some 1,500 followers across the Atlantic, settling
in the Zion of the prophet, Bishop H i l l , or Biskopskulla, in Illinois.5
Perhaps not surprisingly, Swedish emigration to Canada began at
about the same time.6 This is because many of the Swedes who came
to North America did so by sailing from Norway to Quebec. A l ­though
a few stayed in Canada, the overwhelming majority contin­ued
to the United States.7 As the American frontier closed and the
amount of available land in the United States declined, more and
more Scandinavians started regarding Canada, and particularly the
Canadian Midwest, as an increasingly attractive area for immigra­tion.
The Canadian Pacific Railway opened up possibilities for colo­nization
of the prairie, and in the 1880s many Minnesota Scandina­vians
were moving north, in particular to Saskatchewan and Alberta.8
(See map of Swedes in Canada, p. 179.)
As in the United States, the Scandinavian immigrants arrived
relatively late and found the best land already taken. Many of the
Swedes immigrating to Canada came from the northern parts of
Sweden, and many had worked in forestry. Many of the Swedish
settlements came to be located in the forested areas in Alberta.
153
Another region where the Swedish presence still is particularly strong,
according to the Swedish emigration historian U l f Beijbom, is around
Edmonton. This region became something of a "Minnesota of
Canada."9 8 Here, ethnic Swedish settlers were among the pioneers.
Curiously, many of these Swedes did not arrive from Sweden proper
or the United States. In fact, many belonged to a little-known Swed­ish
community in Southern Ukraine, called Gammalsvenskby. These
early settlers arrived in the Edmonton-Wetaskiwin area as early as
1885, following in the footsteps of early Mennonite immigrants from
Ukraine. By 1933, immigrants from Gammalsvenskby and their de­scendants
constituted as much as 20 percent of the Swedes in Alberta.
In 1930 their community was expanded by some ninety additional
Gammalsvenskby pioneers, twelve of whom are still alive at the time
of the seventy-fifth anniversary of their immigration to Canada in
2005.9 b However, the indisputable center for Swedish life in Canada
from the 1880s up to the outbreak of World War II was Winnipeg.1 0
It became central to the Scandinavians in Canada in ways no city in
the U.S. ever was for Scandinavian Americans.
As noted above, Swedish emigration to Canada was small com­pared
to migration to the United States, and significant numbers did
not come until somewhat later. For example, while the Swedish-born
population in the United States peaked in 1910, the Swedish popu­lation
in Canada reached its peak in 1931. As a comparison, in 1910
there were 665,000 Swedish-born and 753,000 second-generation
Swedes in the United States, with the people of Swedish origin
making up 1.5 percent of the U.S. population. The number of sec­ond-
generation Swedes peaked in 1930." In Canada, the number of
Swedish-born people was almost 35,000, with the total number of
people of Swedish origin estimated at 81,000, making up 0.8 percent
of the total population in the 1931 census.12 In the census of 1911,
the people who had migrated from the United States into Canada
were not regarded as nor counted as Americans, but according to
their country of ethnicity. They were, therefore, counted as Britons,
Scandinavians, etc., even if they often referred to themselves as
Americans.1 3 Of the total number of Scandinavians in the 1911
census, 29,000 were born in Sweden, 20,000 in Norway, and some
4,000 in Denmark. To this number were added 26,600 Scandina-
154
vians born in the United States. Of the Scandinavian-born immi­grants,
no fewer than 86 percent had settled in the prairie provinces
and British Columbia, while two-thirds of the U.S.-born Scandina­vians
settled in the West.14
The Scandinavians were welcomed and desired as settlers, espe­cially
after they had shown their abilities as farmers on the American
prairies. The relatively weak sense of a separate nationality of the
Swedes, which often meant that they easily vanished and were as­similated
into the mainstream population, made them all the more
attractive as immigrants.1 5 The Swedes who emigrated to the United
States had generally a very positive attitude toward Anglo-Saxon
culture and customs, which they often admired. In general, the simi­larities
in languages, religion, and customs between the Scandina­vians
and the Anglo-Saxon majority population made the Scandina­vians
easy to assimilate. Nevertheless, the group remained remark­ably
ethnically homogenous. For example, relatively few Swedes
married outside their ethnic group. Even in the heavily immigrant
city of Chicago some 90 percent of the Swedes married other Swedes
in 1910. The few mixed marriages were made primarily with other
Scandinavians or Germans. As a reason for this ethnic exclusiveness
Ulf Beijbom suggests that the choices of partners were limited to
Gammalsvenskby farmers in meadows, from Helge N e l s o n , The Swedes and Swedish
Settlements in North America, 355
155
fellow Lutherans or, at least, Protestants.16 Resistance to the English
language or American public schools was rare, and many of the
Swedish emigrants to America had not been influenced by the ro­mantic
and nationalist-motivated wave of interest in peasant and
folk art in Sweden of the 1890s. The writer Vilhelm Berger suggests,
as an explanation for the ready and widespread acceptance of the
English language, the relatively low level of education among the
emigrants and their inability to see themselves "as carriers of an old
culture in a new country."17
Another factor that made the Scandinavians welcome in Canada
was that they were considered good farmers. This was particularly
true for the Danes, who had a long tradition of excellence in agricul­ture.
Denmark and the Netherlands were the only two countries in
western Europe that were relatively unaffected by urbanization dur­ing
the nineteenth century, due to efficient and competitive farming
techniques. A commonly held perception in the Canadian political
establishment around the turn of the century was, "There are few
nations that have a sharper eye for the best agricultural ground in
Canada, than the Danes. The experience tells us that wherever the
Danes settle, there will be a blossoming and prosperous [ b l o m s t r e n de
og v e l d y r k e n d e ] colony."18
Even though the Scandinavians have remained one of the most
agricultural and rural of the North American immigrant groups, al­ready
by 1910 a majority of them were urban dwellers.1 9 In relation
to other Scandinavians, it was the Swedes who moved particularly
rapidly into the cities, and this trend accelerated the breaking of
traditions and linguistic barriers. The Americanization of the Swed­ish-
Americans was, therefore, ' cultural rather than biological.
Another factor in the declining strength of the Swedish culture
was the relatively lower birth rate among Swedish women compared
to Norwegians and Germans, some of their most common neighbors
in the American Midwest. That increased the strength of Norwegian
and German communities at the expense of the Swedes.20
As Richard Hofstaedter has shown in his Social D a r w i n i s m i n A m e r i ­can
T h o u g h t , the notion of racial mysticism played an important role
in Social Darwinism in North America.2 1 In particular, an aura of
mystique surrounded the Nordic "race," to which the Anglo-Saxon,
156
Germanic, and Scandinavian peoples belonged. This Germanic fam­ily
was sometimes extended to include the Finns, sometimes not.22
The Swedish Finns who had come to Canada from the coastal areas
of western Finland were hardly distinguishable from the mainland
Swedes; but Finns from the interior of Finland were sometimes re­garded,
by Scandinavians and Canadians alike, as "belonging rather
to the Mongolian race."2 3 These beliefs surrounding the Germanic
peoples were commonly held on both sides of the Atlantic. Racial
biology was the science of the day. The only difference was in regards
to where in the hierarchy of the Germanic family Scandinavians and
Anglo-Saxons belonged. Sometimes the Scandinavians were regarded
second only to the Anglo-Saxons when it came to desirable racial
and cultural qualities,2 4 at other times they were ranked higher than
the Anglo-Saxons. Sir Charles Tupper, the High Commissioner for
Canada in London, described Scandinavians thus in a letter to the
Honorable President of the Privy Council in 1892: "The Scandina­vian
becomes at once an ideal immigrant who is not surpassed by
any other nation, not even by the pick of the emigrants from the
United Kingdom."2 5
The issue of class also played an important role in the selection
and/or desirability of various immigrant groups. As the number of
poor English migrants to Canada increased, it became increasingly
hard to find immigrants who had the qualities desired.2 6 The Cana­dian
emigration agents were blunt about what these qualities were.
They emphasized physical strength and docility—apparently traits
that Scandinavians possessed—among the men, who were wanted in
the mining and lumber industries.2 7 As for Scandinavian women,
Tupper had the following to say: "The Scandinavian servant girls are
clean, honest, industrious and intelligent. They are generally well
domesticated and capable women, and accustomed to low wages
and a simple quiet life."2 8 John Dyke, Canadian immigration agent in
Liverpool, from which many Scandinavians left for the United States,
held similar views: "In giving an impetus to immigration, one emi­grant
from the Scandinavian Kingdoms . . . is equal to seven English­men."
2 9
The implications are clear. The Scandinavians were the sort of
immigrants the United States and Canada desired. They were as-
157
sumed to be content with little and would not compete with the
Anglo-Saxons. Yet, in regards to race, language, and religion, they
were considered appropriate as potential new Canadians.
Dyke further reported that even the Prime Minister himself, Sir
John A . Macdonald, had been "specially interested in the fine bodies
of Scandinavians he had seen en route to the United States."30 De­spite
these positive attitudes on the part of Canadian authorities, few
Scandinavian emigrants found their way to Canada. A t the turn of
the century, there were 31,042 Scandinavians and 2,502 Finns in
Canada, compared to 1,250,733 Scandinavians and 129,680 Finns
in the United States.31
To combat this imbalance, and to increase the number of Scan­dinavian
immigrants to Canada, the Canadian government started
an active campaign for the recruitment of immigrants of desirable
ethnic origins in the late nineteenth century. This bore some suc­cesses.
In 1873, for example, a group of about one hundred Icelandic
immigrants established a settlement in Ontario. Half of these moved
south of the border and settled in Wisconsin, while the rest tried to
establish a colony in Russeau, Muskoka.3 2 They soon moved further
west to the district of Kewatin in what today is the province of
Manitoba, where, in 1875, they set up Nýja Ísland, centered around
the community of Gimli (which means paradise) on the southwest
shore of Lake Winnipeg.3 3 When the Icelanders first arrived in
Manitoba, the local people were surprised to see Caucasian, white
Scandinavians. "Where are the Icelanders? Show us the Icelanders!"
demanded the locals when the party arrived. John Taylor, the immi­gration
scout who had recruited the Icelanders, pointed at the group.
"There are the Icelanders. You see them there." The locals refused to
believe him. "We know what the Icelanders are like. They are short,
about four feet, rather stout and thickset, with long black hair and
much like the Eskimos. These people are not Icelanders. They are
white people!"34
The new arrivals organized their colony as a "miniature republic"
and based its laws upon the Icelandic democratic experiences of the
Althing.3 5 They adopted a constitution early in 1878 and officially
declared their colony to be an independent republic. Icelandic was
declared the only official language of the republic.3 6 The constitution
158
"regulated elections; defined the duties of voters as well as officials;
provided for taxation and public works; for relief to the needy, guard­ianship
of minors, appraisal and disposal of estates; arbitration of
disputes with a court of appeal; the keeping of records, covering vital
statistics, economic progress, estates and wardships."37
The constitutionalism and the pioneering nature of the settle­ments
on the shore of Lake Winnipeg became important ingredients
in the Icelandic-Canadian creation myths. Much of this is just that,
however, myth. While Nýja Ísland was established well outside the
boundaries of the then-small territory of the province of Manitoba, it
was nevertheless fully under the laws of Canada. Despite this reality,
the constitution was of great importance for the legitimacy of the
settlement. It provided a sense of stability and was a link to the
history and a symbol of the continuity of Icelandic political culture.
As such it carried enormous symbolical importance to the settlers.
The constitution remained in effect for almost a decade until the
federal Canadian government abolished it in 1887.38
The Icelanders had originally planned to settle in the United
States, but were persuaded by. a Canadian immigration agent to
settle north of the border and to try out the new land under special
provisions. The Governor-General himself, Lord Dufferin, had vis­ited
Iceland and approved of its people.3 9 Not long after the estab­lishment
of Nýja Ísland in 1877, the Governor-General, who had
been taking an active interest in the fate of the Icelandic republic,
traveled all the way from Ottawa to visit the settlement.4 0 He was
genuinely pleased with what he saw. The Icelanders are a proudly
literate people, and Dufferin was particularly impressed that these
poor immigrants who still lived in recently erected huts possessed
substantial private libraries. This was something rare among pioneers
on the prairies, even among those who were second- and third-generation
Canadians. He had not entered "a single cot or hut in the
colony where there was not a library of twenty to thirty volumes
however bare the walls and scanty the furnishing."4 1 Ironically, the
visit and speech of the representative of the queen became a defining
legitimizing moment for the Icelandic Canadians, a historical event
in importance comparable to the adoption of their "republican" con­stitution.
159
The experience from Nýja Ísland apparently impressed the Ca­nadian
government, because the province of Manitoba became the
most active in preparing and printing immigrant recruitment pam­phlets
in the Nordic languages for distribution all over Northern
Europe.4 2 John Dyke had the same positive impression of Icelanders
as he had of mainland Nordic immigrants. According to him, the
Icelanders "were one of the finest lots of emigrants which have ever
left Europe; just the people for the new country, very simple i n their
habits and requirements, and remarkably abstemious."43 This was an
attitude shared by the local Manitoba papers: "[The Icelanders] are
smart-looking, intelligent people and a most valuable acquisition to
the population of our province."44
The propaganda campaign that followed was a massive under­taking.
Between 1883 and 1894, the federal government in Ottawa
sent 390,000 pamphlets or leaflets to Denmark and Norway, 330,000
to Sweden, and 56,000 to Finland. To these numbers we must add
the leaflets distributed in the Nordic countries by the Canadian
Pacific Railroad, steamship lines, and the provinces.4 5 Apparently
the over-zealous Canadian immigration agents were beginning to be
successful, as they became the subjects of severe criticism by Denmark's
central government. Dyke reported to Dominion authorities that the
Danish government was planning to either restrict or prohibit emi­gration
from Iceland to Canada, as they feared a depletion of the
Icelandic population.46
Encouraged by the success of New Iceland, a series of similar
projects were undertaken, catering to the other Nordic peoples. The
first Danish colony, New Denmark, had been set up in New Brunswick
in 1872,47 but after almost twenty years of existence, high land prices
had kept the population small. In 1893 the settlement still only had
83 families.4 8 In 1927 it had a population of some 700 Danes. How­ever,
due to the poor quality of the soil, farming remained marginal
and expansion stagnated.49 A New Scandinavia settlement in Manitoba
did not fare too well either. By 1891 it counted only 77 families.5 0 A
New Finland was established in Saskatchewan and a New Norway in
Alberta 1894, but neither was very successful in terms of recruiting
immigrants.5 1 In the case of the Finns, they were too poor, and many
simply lacked the initial financing needed in order to utilize the free
160
land they received, while others were reluctant to take out loans or
commit to the long-term investment necessary to be successful farm­ers.
52 The number of Finns remained small, and many of them re­turned
home to the newly independent Finland during the 1920s
and 1930s. A substantial group of radical Finns even re-migrated
from North America to Soviet Karelia.
In Saskatchewan, the two major Swedish settlements were Percival
and New Stockholm. They were both small, and today no more than
500 Scandinavians still live in Percival.5 3 New Stockholm was orga­nized
by the Scandinavian National Association (Skandinaviska
Nationalföreningen) in Winnipeg, founded in 1884 and catering pri­marily
to the Swedes of Winnipeg. The initiative came from Emmanuel
Öhlén, a central figure among Scandinavian-Canadians in Winnipeg.
The purpose was to make the transition to the new country easier for
recent immigrants.5 4 One of the ways to do so was to establish a
Scandinavian colony for recent arrivals, which would work as an
alternative to Winnipeg, the central city for Swedes in Canada, where
life often was grim and the prospects limited for recently arrived
immigrants with poor command of English. Öhlén worked for the
Canadian government in different capacities, one of which was as
immigration scout.55 Between February and May 1886, Öhlén was in
Sweden, where he promoted the new colony and the Canadian west
on behalf of the Canadian government.5 6 However, New Stockholm
never really took off, and the Swedish population there remained
insignificant. Today the small village is dominated by a large Hungar­ian
church and cemetery.
Winnipeg was the central point of Scandinavian life in Western
Canada.5 7 Interestingly, as time went by it started to attract more
and more Icelanders as well, both from New Iceland and from Ice­land
proper,58 even if a majority of the Icelandic immigrants up until
the end of the century immigrated directly to G i m l i . 5 9 In comparison
with other Nordic peoples, the Icelandic situation was different from
the beginning. Their somewhat contradictory focus on assimilation,
while retaining their ethnic profile, contrasted with the other Scandi­navians'
"first generation" immigrant attitude, which emphasized the
establishment of economic security and a decent material standard,
without much involvement in the political or cultural life of Canada.6 0
161
The Icelanders had two newspapers, each supporting one of the two
major rival political parties—the Conservatives and Liberals—and
far-progressed plans to start up a secondary school in Winnipeg that
would open up the road to professional careers for the Icelandic
immigrants. Other Scandinavians had no such plans, and their com­munity
was less integrated into mainstream Canadian society.61
The Icelandic approach proved to be more successful, economi­cally
as well as politically, and soon the Icelanders were the most
successful Nordic immigrant group in western Canada. One of the
peculiarities of immigration is that the social-economic order some­times
is changed in the new country. The Icelanders, the poorest
Nordic people, became the economic elite among the Nordic immi­grants
to Canada. Among the other Scandinavians in Winnipeg,
there was a constant inferiority complex toward the Icelanders, which
further added to the alienation caused by the linguistic barrier that
already existed between Icelandic and the other Scandinavian lan­guages.
62 Icelandic participation in Scandinavian community events
was given attention in the same way as Anglo-Saxon participation
was, and the Icelanders were seen as something of a big brother,
richer and more successful.63
Winnipeg was also the only city to develop a "Swede town" in
Canada.6 4 This center of settlement was and remained central to the
Swedish and Scandinavian population in Canada from the time im­migration
started in the 1870s up until 1940, when Vancouver took
over as the largest "Scandinavian" city in Canada. After 1929, the
number of new arrivals was very low, and many Winnipeg Scandina­vians
had already left the city and moved further west to British
Columbia.6 5
In religious matters the Scandinavian-American influences on
the Scandinavian-Canadian community were strong from the very
outset, and, as in America, religious issues divided the Scandinavian
community from the very start. These divisions ran not only between
different Protestant denominations, but also between religious and
nonreligious Swedes. The religious differences were not great, how­ever,
and the divisions centered mainly on what seem to be minor—
albeit important at the time—theological issues. Virtually all the
religious life in Scandinavia was based upon different theological
162
doctrines stemming from Lutheranism. The same thing was true for
American and Canadian Scandinavians. The differences separating
different Lutheran-based theologies may appear minuscule and insig­nificant
to a latter-day observer, living in an age when the more
liberal Protestant denominations are in crisis and the Lutheran and
Episcopalian churches in America seem to be moving closer and
closer to each other and have clergy that are interchangeable. But
from the very outset religion became an ethnic marker in the New
World, and Lutheranism became the symbol and representation of
Scandinavian or Nordic heritage.
There were three Swedish churches in Winnipeg, two Lutheran
and one linked to the Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant Church
of America.6 6 The latter was a splinter group from the Swedish
Lutheran Church back in Sweden, and the North American branch
had broken with the Augustana Synod.6 7 From the very beginning
the Lutherans had been worried that the Mission Covenant and the
Anglican Church would proselytize and recruit members among the
Lutheran immigrants. The Mission Covenant congregation was feared
because of its zealousness, the Anglican Church because of its simi­larity
to the Lutheran church and the fact that it possessed both
buildings and a permanent clergy.68 The Episcopalian, Presbyterian,
and Methodist Churches also had the advantage of being established,
Anglo-Saxon churches, and were not thus regarded as "foreign" or
"ethnic" congregations. Some Lutheran Scandinavians had "capitu­lated"
and joined these Protestant denominations.6 9 The Mission
Covenant Church had sent a Swedish-American missionary from
Michigan in 1874 to work among the Swedes in Winnipeg, and in
1884 the church extended its Dakota and Red River Valley district
to include Winnipeg. In 1885 God's Scandinavian Congregation (Guds
Skandinaviska Församling) was established in Winnipeg. It soon
changed name to the First Scandinavian Christian Mission Congre­gation
(Första Skandinaviska Kristna Missionsförsamlingen).7 0 The
Lutherans, too, were under the leadership of Swedish Americans. In
1890 the Zion Lutheran Congregation (Lutherska Zionförsamlingen)
was established. This came a year after the establishment of a Lutheran
church in New Stockholm. The Lutherans were not especially eager
proselytizers; they were more oriented toward ethnic Scandinavian
163
and German communities. Often Lutheran congregations were set
up in response to Mission Covenant activity. Manitoba became part
of the Augustana Lutheran Church's Minnesota Synod. Clerical orga­nization
and theological orientation were some of the matters in
which the 49t h parallel proved to be irrelevant to the Scandinavian
community.
While the Mission Covenant Church was pan-Scandinavian, Zion
Lutheran was clearly Swedish in character, and this was, in part, an
inheritance from the mother church in America. South of the border,
the Norwegians had broken off from the Augustana Synod already in
1870 and created a synod of their own. In Winnipeg the Danes and
Norwegians set up their own Lutheran congregation, independent of
the Augustana Synod.7 1 The Swedish Lutherans under the Augustana
Synod were very nationalistic, and Swedish patriotism, royalism, and
national symbols were a part of the agenda and the identity of the
church.7 2-
There is another important aspect of Scandinavian religious ac­tivities
in North America. Nationalism in Europe had, since the days
of Herder and Fichte, been centered upon language and linguistic
identity. In North America, where there was a strong emphasis on
assimilation and acquisition of the English language, the use of Scan­dinavian
languages declined rapidly with every generation, and was
thus obviously not a good ethnic marker. This is not to say that the
Scandinavians did not worry about the decline of the use of their
languages in America, but religion largely replaced language as a
marker of Scandinavian heritage and ethnicity.
The religious Swedes, in particular those who belonged to the
Mission Covenant Church, often showed a high degree of intoler­ance
toward the nonreligious and objected to drinking, dancing, and
nonreligious musical entertainment in Scandinavian community
events.73 Another serious divide within the community was between
drinkers and teetotalers, the latter being the only nonreligious orga­nized
force to rival the churches.7 4 This was one of the reasons why
religious and political discussions were explicitly forbidden in the
constitution of the Scandinavian Club.7 5 Scandinavian organizations
existed all across America, and they expanded into Canada through
the Swedish-Americans. Today, perhaps the most active are the Sons
164
of Norway, founded in Minneapolis in 1895,76 and the Vasa Order of
America.7 7 These clubs were cultural in orientation and wanted to
elevate themselves above religious and political divisions. Appar­ently,
they were not entirely successful, as one Danish immigrant to
Canada reflected when he complained about the meager selection of
cultural activities on the Canadian prairies: "There is also a lot that
you miss from back home, things that you hardly didn't think of back
there, such as readily [sic] access to good entertaining, music, theater,
lectures, sports, entertainment for both boys and girls."78
The Scandinavian clubs and societies were set up to counter this
perceived cultural void and to bridge the gap to the faraway home­land
for many homesick Scandinavians. The clubs and lodges were
also designated to help people in need, as medical and social services
often were limited or simply nonexistent.79
With the notable exception of the Icelandic Canadians, the other
Nordic immigrants seem to have been relatively unsuccessful in trans­planting
their literatures to North America. Vilhelm Moberg, while
traveling through the Swedish-American settlements in the United
States in the late 1940s, made the following observation:
The American people have an average higher material
standard of living than us, but the cultural standard of the
large masses is lower than in Sweden. As far as I have been
able to tell the bookshelf is a rarer piece of furniture in
American homes than in Swedish. Even more seldom do you
see paintings of artistic value on their walls. . . . A rich and
highly-developed theater life is flourishing in the largest cit­ies,
but outside these, theater art is something rare. Theaters
are few, the cinemas are reigning supreme. Even a city as big
as Minneapolis—with a population roughly the same size as
Stockholm—lacks a permanent theater. In the city of Turku
12,000 Swedes maintain a theater, but no one would come
up with the fantastic idea of founding a Swedish theater in,
say, Chicago, where there are at least 100,000 persons who
can speak and understand our language. Unfortunately, it is
not the number of Swedes that are deciding the survival of
our culture in foreign lands. A Swede in Turku and a Swede
165
in Chicago are not comparable as individuals.80
The relatively limited scale of a vital Scandinavian literature and
theater in North America was to some extent compensated by the
Scandinavian-language press, which reflected the size and the vitality
of the community. According to the Swedish journalist Alfred
Söderström, up until 1910 there had been no fewer than 1,158
Swedish-American newspapers and journals issued in North America.
The Swedish press was represented in 29 states. In Illinois alone, 324
papers had been published, and Minnesota saw 190. In the spring of
1910 there were 58 weekly journals and 232 monthly publications in
Swedish America. The two largest were Svenska T r i b u n e n - N y h e t e r in
Chicago, with a circulation of 65,000 in 1915, and Svenska A m e r i k a n s ka
Posten in Minneapolis, with 56,000 readers that year.81 The Norwe­gian-
language press in the United States also had a large circulation.
Between 1847 and 1925 some 500 Norwegian journals and newspa­pers
were started in North America—although only about one-fourth
of them survived for any length of time. In 1918 the combined
circulation of these papers was 615,000, the Canadian-Norwegian
papers having a circulation of only 15,000.82
In comparison with the Scandinavian press in the United States,
the Canadian-Scandinavian press was minuscule. In many ways, the
media situation among the Scandinavians in Canada differed, not
surprisingly, from that of the Scandinavians in America. Unlike the
Scandinavian Americans, who had a longer presence in the New
World and a much larger community, the Scandinavians in Canada
did not have an independent press to compare with that south of the
border. Another example of the irrelevance of the border is the fact
that Scandinavian-American newspapers dominated the Scandina­vian-
language press in Canada, their dominance being further strength­ened
by the strong presence of Scandinavian-Americans in Canada.
Nevertheless, the Scandinavians in Canada had their own publi­cations.
The first major newspaper in Scandinavian Canada was
S k a n d i n a v i s k e C a n a d i e n s a r e n , which was founded in 1887 and lasted
until 1895—by which time the paper came out as a small flyer,
marketing different government-sponsored Scandinavian colonization
projects.83 Around the same year, the Scandinavian-language paper
166
Canada was started. It was a continuation of the local paper of the
Mission Covenanters, but it now went through a transformation to
become "a general and secular news magazine."8 4 Its political posi­tion
was enthusiastically Liberal, and it became the most important
organ for the Scandinavian Canadians during the last decade of the
nineteenth century.85 Around the turn of the century another paper,
sponsored by the Canadian government and aimed at attracting
Swedish immigrants to Canada, Svenska Canada T i d n i n g e n , was
founded. It soon became the most important Scandinavian language
paper in the country.8 6 As for strictly Norwegian-language papers,
the most important in Canada was Norrøna, founded in Winnipeg in
1910 and covering news, local as well as from Scandinavia.8 7 Norrøna
had the same editor as Svenska Canada T i d n i n g e n and was aimed at
attracting Norwegians to Canada. In both cases ads promoting immi­gration
and paid for by the Federal Department of Immigration and
Colonisation were included, and the Canadian government funded
their distribution in Scandinavia.8 8 The only other Norwegian-lan­guage
paper in Canada that lasted for some time was H y r d e n (The
shepherd), a Canadian organ for the Norwegian Lutheran Church in
Canada. It came into existence in 1924, but its Norwegian-language
content decreased with every year, and by 1949 it was an entirely
English-language paper, the name H y r d e n replaced with its English
translation, The Shepherd.69
Of all the Nordic immigrants to North America, the Icelanders
were the only group that made Canada their primary destination.
This is a crucial difference between the Icelanders and other Nordic
immigrants. The Icelanders were concentrated primarily in Manitoba
and were not under the influence of a larger "mother" community
south of the border, as was case with the other nationalities that
made up the Scandinavian Canadians. The majority of Icelanders in
North America lived in Canada and had established two papers in
the 1880s that reflected the political divisions within their commu­nity:
the conservative H e i m s k r i n g l a and the liberal Lögberg.90 The
papers merged in 1959 and now appear as the weekly Lögberg-
H e i m s k r i n g l a .
While the Icelandic press in Canada covered many aspects of life
and politics in Canada, the Scandinavian press in Canada was prima-
167
rily dedicated to practical concerns of their ethic community. The
expressed ambition was to inform the newly arrived immigrants about
the new country and its institutions, and to help them establish
themselves in Canada. To integrate the Scandinavians into Canadian
society was never a strongly emphasized goal.9 1 Since political, liter­ary,
and cultural issues were already covered by the Scandinavian-
American journals and papers that reached Canada in large num­bers,
the Scandinavian-Canadian press covered but a narrow niche,
dealing primarily with practical concerns related to life in the new
land.
One of the arguments for having a separate Scandinavian-Cana­dian
language press was that the Scandinavian-American papers did
not know and did not report about Canadian events and condi­tions.
9 2 Therefore, a study of the Scandinavian papers in Canada
gives a good insight into the Scandinavian community around the
turn of the century and sheds light on the inter-ethnic relations of
western Canadian society at the turn of the century. The Danes,
Norwegians, and Swedes arrived in a society with a rigorous ethnic
pecking order. As mentioned above,, they were near the top of that
pecking order, in the same category as other Germanic immigrants.
Above them were the Anglo-Saxons and the Icelanders, who, due
often to a command of the language and better organization were
able to advance more quickly in the new country. There was some
resentment among the Scandinavians regarding the fact that the
English and the Scots controlled the political system and held all the
important political posts.93 The Scandinavians also shared many of
the prejudices about Anglo-Saxon immigrants from the lower strata
of the economic spectrum. They often felt that the British immi­grants
had a superior attitude, and that they refused to take simpler
jobs. Another widely held impression was that the British immigrants
were rhetorically superior, but worked less hard than the Scandina­vians.
9 4 Ironically, the same complaints that the Scandinavians had
about the British were sometimes applied to Scandinavians as well.
Olaf Linck, a Danish writer traveling through Danish Canada in the
1920s, encountered these attitudes among Canadian "natives." For
example, when he asked a Calgary immigration officer about what
he thought of the Danes, the official answered that "the Danes are
168
among the best, but there are also many bad individuals among
them." He also observed that some Danes, arriving without money
or means to finance themselves, considered themselves too good to
do physical labor on the farms and wanted white-collar jobs. The
worst kind, the immigration officer said, where those who came
without being sufficiently versed in the English language, but who
nevertheless thought that there ought to be some jobs open for them
with the government, "once they had shown Canada the honour of
showing up."95
Relations with other ethnic groups, linguistically and culturally
less kindred than the Anglo-Saxons, Icelanders, and Germans, were
very limited and colored by suspicion and prejudice. Very few Scan­dinavians
had actually met Ukrainians, Jews, or Chinese before arriv­ing
in North America. They arrived from highly homogenous ethnic
societies. One might expect, therefore, that they would be untainted
by racial prejudices. Nevertheless, the image of "the other" was very
strong among the Scandinavian immigrants, who very quickly found
their place in the pecking order. If the Icelanders and British annoy­ingly
placed themselves above the Scandinavians, there was a row of
people beneath them. Perhaps the best-known Scandinavian-Cana­dian
writer, Sven Delblanc, who was born in Swan River, Manitoba
in 1931, describes these hierarchies in his semi-autobiographical book
Kaanans land.9 63
Power and money and land determined honor and rank
in Minitonas, as in all other societies on earth. In case of
equal conditions, origin and race were the most important.
The native-born Canadians were the most prestigious, par­ticularly
if they stemmed from the British Isles. Somewhat
less prestigious were the Scandinavians, the simple cousins of
the Brittons, equal with the Dutch and Germans in rank.
The Scandinavians had a reputation of being naïve, perhaps
because they could easily be fooled in business transactions.
The Irish were rather rare. They preferred the allegiance to
the English crown by joining their countless co-patriots in the
United States. Below Germans and Scandinavians were the
Southern Europeans, "dagos" and "wops" and whatever they
169
were called, even further down were the motley crew of
eastern Europeans—"ruskies," "bohunks," "polkas," a multi­tude
of people who often were simply referred to as "Galicians."
The negroes were few and far between and worked mostly as
train conductors, and it was therefore possible to brag about
not having any "negro problems" or prejudices. . . . The
Jewish problem was something that belonged to the big cit­ies,
the "yellow peril" mostly to be found on the West Coast,
and Mr. Lee was the sole representative of his race in Minitonas.
He was diligent and proper, always polite and delightful, but
nevertheless strangely isolated. He sought nobody's company
and nobody sought his, he stuck to his wife and the cafe. . . .
He stoically attended his till and did not display any annoy­ance
when the children gathered outside his window to sing
"Ching, Chong, Chinaman, make a lot of money."9 6b
If Canada had less of a class-based society than the Scandinavian
countries, the immigrant communities of the prairies instead had a
certain racial hierarchy, which was taken for granted.
Sven Delblanc's father, Sigurd D e l b l a n c , from. Helge N e l s o n , The Swedes and the
Swedish Settlements in North America, 356
170
British and American immigrants were regarded as the
most desirable, followed by northern and western Europeans,
central and eastern Europeans and then by Jews and southern
Europeans. . . . Last were the blacks and the Asian immi­grants
. . . who were considered inferior and unassimilable.9 6c
If the Scandinavians had grown up with a clear stereotype of the
Jew, then the Galician Ukrainians and the Asians must have been
peoples to whom they were wholly unaccustomed. Yet, writers in the
Swedish press soon found words to describe what they saw as strange
people from cultures with which they were not familiar and which
they could not understand. In their attempts to get accepted into
mainstream society, the Scandinavians internalized the majority society's
attitudes toward the Slavs, for example. George Fisher Chapman
wrote an article that received much attention when it was published
in The C a n a d i a n M a g a z i n e 1909. He had only praise for Icelanders
and Scandinavians, but heaped scorn on the Galicians. Chapman
emphasized that the Galicians were a particular problem. They are
depicted as the unhappy products of a civilization one thousand
years behind the Canadian who, therefore, cannot share the Cana­dian
respect for life and freedom, nor the Canadian sense of cleanli­ness.
Chapman saw no other solution than subjecting the Galicians
to surveillance and pushed for strong missionary efforts by the Protes­tant
churches in the Galician community. Already, he noted, the
Galicians had been diverted from the "fakir priests" of the Orthodox
Church, but there was still much work left to be done.97
The Scandinavian-Canadian press, perhaps echoing the jargon of
their community, referred to the Galicians as "sheepskin-clad
Galicians," or simply "sheepskins."98 Often, in reports covering Ukrai­nians
and eastern Europeans, Canada used a derogatory or sarcastic
language. Comments such as " A smaller party of 'sheepskins' arrived
yesterday," or that immigration officer Åkerlind "had the pleasure (?)
of accompanying" a larger party of Ukrainians from Ottawa to
Winnipeg.9 9 The same was true for Svenska Canada T i d n i n g e n . It
quite often reported about Galician activities, and the news always
reflected negatively upon the Eastern European immigrants.
171
A report on immigration to Winnipeg covered in Svenska Canada
T i d n i n g e n in 1913 may serve as an illustration of prevailing attitudes.
The report recounted how recent immigrants were housed in two
different buildings, a newer one for Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians
and an older one for eastern Europeans. The paper contrasts the
cleanliness and order in the newer building with the situation in the
eastern-European barracks and explains how it was not easy to keep
the latter group's barracks decently clean, as the tenants "are not
used to any exaggerated cleanliness."1 0 0 The immigration authorities
have to clean and disinfect the barracks of the Galicians often, since
"many of their guests do not come alone but are accompanied by
friends whose name we perhaps do not need to mention." To counter
their dubious sexual habits, the immigration authorities attempted to
segregate the Galicians along gender lines.1 0 1 The Swedish press con­trasted
what they saw as the unpleasant racial features of the Slavs
with the racial purity of the Scandinavians. The Swedes, with "their
powerful figures with their open, honest facial characteristics, stand
in sharp contrast to the Slavic elements who well represented also
here."1 0 2
The Jews were even less appealing to the Scandinavian press.
Canada referred to the Jew as an aesthetically "not too enviable
figure."1 0 3 Svenska Canada T i d n i n g e n repeatedly referred to the Jews
as "undesirable"1 0 4 and "an inferior race."1 0 5 Another group the Scan­dinavians
felt alienated from were the Asians. In an untranslatable
quote from 26 April 1905, Svenska Canada T i d n i n g e n referred to the
Chinese as "stadens snedögda tvättbjörnar"106 hinting at their predomi­nance
within the laundry business.107 Through internalizing prevalent
prejudices the Scandinavians found a comfortable way to integrate,
but not fully assimilate, into Canadian society. By emphasizing the
foreign nature of the "other," rather than actively seeking to assimi­late,
many Scandinavians found a comfortable way to acceptance
and integration.
Given their similarities to the British, as the Scandinavians as­similated
into the Canadian mainstream they soon became widely
regarded as a part of the Protestant establishment, sometimes referred
to as the Anglo-Scandinavian majority.1 0 8 Common prejudices among
the Northern European-Canadians soon crystallized into political en-
172
gagement. In the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan drew support from many
Scandinavian settlers, worried about the influx of foreign racial and
religious elements into western Canada. One of the demands of the
Klan was that immigration to the prairie be limited to "trained"
Scandinavian and northern European immigrants.1 0 9 This agenda fell
on fertile ground among a Scandinavian population weary of the
increasing influx of French-speaking Roman Catholics and Slavs,
who were thought to avoid assimilation or simply deemed unassimilable
inferiors or traitors to their Protestant country.1 10
The Scandinavian papers also tell us something about the rela­tions
between the Scandinavians and the dominant Anglo-Saxon
community. Over the decades, these very much followed the ebb
and flow of the political tides. One of the more sensitive issues was
the Boer War, which caused much indignation among the Scandina­vians.
This was reflected in the pages of the local press. The pro-Boer
sentiments were strong all over continental Europe, but particularly
so in Germany and the Nordic countries.1 1 1 Many of the Scandina­vian-
American farmers who relocated to the Canadian prairie came
after living in mixed German-Scandinavian communities in the
American Midwest, where pro-Boer sentiments ran strong. Canada
contrasted Victorian British aggression with the humane way in which
the Boers treated their prisoners of war.1 1 2 It emphasized that this was
Britain's war, not Canada's.1 1 3 Admiring reports described the heroic
efforts of Scandinavian volunteers on the side of the Boers. The fact
that more Swedish than Norwegian and Danish volunteers had been
killed in the Battle of Bloemfontein was presented in nationalistic
colors. By their sacrificial deaths for the Boers, the Swedes had "dem­onstrated
their heroic reputation" ("häfdat sitt r y k t e f o r h j e l t e m o d " ) . m
The Scandinavians and their newspaper, which had long shown Lib­eral
sympathies, openly disagreed with Prime Minister Laurier's com­promise
decision to send Canadian volunteers to fight on the British
side in the war.1 15
The Scandinavian concerns regarding Anglo-Saxon and English-only
nationalism in Canada ran high during the Boer War, but they
peaked in both Canada and the United States during World War I.
The outbreak of hostilities in Europe brought Canada into the con­flict
almost immediately, while the United States entered the war
173
only in 1917. There was an initial wartime Scandinavian-Canadian
jealousy toward the Scandinavian-American community, which lived
in a country that stayed until April 1917. There was also much
dissatisfaction about the openly pro-German stance of much of the
Swedish-American press. This caused many bitter comments in Svenska
Canada T i d n i n g e n . 1 1 6 During the Boer War differing opinions regard­ing
the war effort had been tolerated—the Canadian involvement
was not that great, and the Liberal government under Laurier had
reservations regarding Canadian participation. A t the time of the
outbreak of World War I the situation was different. The conflict was
seen as a fight for world hegemony and cultural survival. The Scandi­navian
press in Canada, in sharp contrast to that of the United
States, felt the pressure to keep a low profile i n order to avoid
unwanted attention or accusations of limited patriotism. Many Swedes
in Winnipeg participated in a 3,000-man-strong meeting of loyalty
arranged by "The Naturalised Citizens" on 15 September 1914. The
Swedes made sure to have their participation noticed, as the Swedish
Royal anthem, Kungssången, was played twice.1 1 7 The author of an
editorial in Svenska Canada T i d n i n g e n underlined the Swedes'
"Canadianness" and joined the chorus of war supporters when he
wrote, "As long as he is walking on Canadian soil and eating Cana­dian
bread," the Swede must forget his old sympathies for the Ger­mans.
1 1 8 Sympathy for the Germans and identification with them
were things that many immigrants had brought with them from the
old country, but pro-German sentiment ran even stronger among
some Scandinavian-Americans (especially Swedish-Americans), who
had brought with them a positive attitude toward their former Ger­man
neighbors on the American prairies.1 1 9 Once again the influence
from the Scandinavian mother community south of the border was
strong.
This time, however, the ties across the 49t h parallel turned out to
be a burden and source of discomfort for the Scandinavian Canadi­ans.
In an attempt to show loyalty toward the British flag, Svenska
Canada T i d n i n g e n started an aggressive campaign against their much
larger competitors south of the border. A few Swedish-American
papers were particularly singled out for their pro-German sentiments.
Soon after the outbreak of the war, the editor of Svenska Canada
174
Posten went so far as to demand an outright boycott of the Minne­apolis-
based Svenska A m e r i k a n s k a P o s t e n , 1 1 0 the second largest Swed­ish
language newspaper outside Sweden.1 2 1 Later in 1914, M i n n e s o ta
S t a t s T i d n i n g was accused of being " t y s k g a l e n " (German-crazed). In
March 1915 the editor of Svea of Worchester, Massachusetts, was
ironically and angrily singled out as "His Majesty, Kaiser Wilhelm II's
special envoy to the United States."122 A n important question is to
what extent this anti-German attitude was popular among the read­ers.
Lars Ljungmark, who has written the only extensive book on
Swedish immigration to Canada, points out that "there are many
evidences that suggest that Svenska Canada T i d n i n g e n experienced,
or perhaps rather was forced to experience the risk of disloyal letters
to their editor as a threat to its very existence."1 2 3 Much points in
that direction. In April 1917, after the United States entered the
war, the paper declared that no discussion about the war would be
allowed in the letters to the editor section.1 24
The wartime frenzy in Canada targeted anyone not British and
took somewhat ludicrous expressions. As the Swedes were consid­ered
pro-German, they were subjected to discrimination. Many "aliens,"
among them Canadian citizens, lost their jobs, were deported, or had
their lives threatened.1 2 5 Certainly, the Scandinavians suffered less
from this than other minorities, such as Germans, Ukrainians, and
Hungarians.1 2 6 One of the groups for which the war brought about
the most radical changes were the Germans. They were forced to see
how their community was depreciated from being a group of "worthy
immigrants," becoming reevaluated and suddenly regarded as "unde­sirable
aliens."1 2 7 World War I had a strong and negative impact on
the Scandinavian communities in North America.1 2 8 Ironically, the
impact of the constant anti-German war propaganda and the pro-
British sentiments in Canada reached its peak immediately after the
war, with many wounded and exhausted soldiers returning from Eu­rope.
In the summer of 1919 the W i n n i p e g T e l e g r a p h , the largest paper
in the city, declared that they would stop using the term A n g l o - S a x o n
and instead use the term A n g l o - C e l t i c , to keep the proud name of
their people unpolluted by any associations with an insignificant
German tribe.1 29
The year 1919 was a violent and polarizing year. Western Canada
175
had seen much unrest during the hard economic times that followed
upon the end of the war. January 1919 saw bloody riots, as returning
soldiers to Winnipeg roamed through the city, breaking store win­dows,
forcing themselves into private homes and clubs in the immi­grant
quarters, and compelling anyone who could be taken for an
immigrant to kiss Union Jack.1 3 0 None of them was charged.1 3 1 Pa­tience
ran out as returning, disillusioned soldiers were unable to find
employment, while they found that many "alien" immigrants had
jobs. Economic hardships and political strife caused the Winnipeg
General Strike. The city was shaken by riots, culminating in the
"Bloody Sunday" of June 21, when mostly immigrant striking workers
clashed with the police, leaving two dead and many wounded.1 32
During these hard times many Swedish and Norwegian Ameri­cans
returned to the United States. The years 1914-1917 particularly
saw many Swedes and Norwegians re-immigrating south of the bor­der
to a neutral United States, still at peace. The peace in the
United States and the sharply contrasting British xenophobia in
Canada worked as strong pull- and push-factors. O n the other hand,
this did not affect the smaller Danish community, which even in­creased
somewhat in numbers during this period. The same is true for
the small Finnish community.1 3 3 The Icelanders, who did not have a
"mother community" of size south of the border, were unaffected. In
the end, migration across the border did little good for the Scandina­vians,
as the United States entered the war in 1917.
As anti-German frenzy and xenophobic paranoia swept both
countries, the Scandinavians soon felt the pressure to tone down or
suppress displays of ethnic pride. Their languages and cultures were
similar to those of the Germans, with whom they were often con­fused.
In the case of German-Americans, the wartime reaction against
them was so strong that it "nearly destroyed the cultural and institu­tional
base of the German populations" in North America.1 3 4
Since September 2001, we have been painfully reminded of how
easily nationalist sentiment can be fanned and how blind fury can fall
upon certain ethic targets. One of the more curious examples of this
came when the United States Congress passed a resolution to re­name
French fries and French toast freedom fries and freedom toast in
the Capitol's restaurant, as the Bush administration's push for war met
176
French-led opposition in the U N Security Council.1 3 5 This echo of
1917 did not compare to the nationalistic fury that accompanied the
last wave of renaming dishes with dangerously un-American-sound­ing
names during World War I. For example, sauerkraut was re­named
l i b e r t y cabbage in an Orwellian attempt to strengthen morale
on the home front,136 and the war also led to self-censoring and
downplaying of expressions of culture that could cause suspicions of
disloyalty toward the new country. The Germans had been the larg­est
and probably the best-organized ethnic community in the United
States prior to the war.1 3 7 The war brought a severe crackdown not
only on the German community and press. It hit the Scandinavians
hard as well. Laws, aimed at the Germans, forbade newspapers to be
published in foreign languages or meetings and even church services
to be held in languages other than English.1 3 8 This meant that older
Scandinavians, who had limited skills in the English language, were
suddenly unable to hear the words of God in their native languages.
Many old immigrants were effectively turned out of the pioneer
churches they had built.1 3 9 Occasionally, even telephone services
would disconnect customers who spoke in a foreign language or used
English badly, and this affected some Scandinavians.1 4 0 To a high
degree, these nativist laws had impacts on the Scandinavian press, as
many censors were unable to read papers in languages other than
English. The similarities between the Scandinavian and German lan­guages,
and the fact that many Scandinavian-language papers printed
in F r a k t u r s c h r i f t , or Gothic type, caused many monolingual English-speakers
to confuse Scandinavians with Germans.
It was not uncommon that the anti-German frenzy hit Scandina­vians
as well. There were many Scandinavians who were driven out
of town by Anglo-Saxons or suffered other forms of harassment for
being confused with Germans or simply because of their refusal to
become anti-German.1 4 1 Most Scandinavians, including Scandina­vian-
American congressmen, had been strong proponents of peace
and U.S. neutrality in the war. When the United States entered the
war, many Scandinavian Americans were frustrated and saddened.
At a public discussion in a North Dakota farming community, a
Norwegian farmer defended his state's Norwegian-born Senator Asle
Gronna and Wisconsin's Robert LaFollette for daring to vote against
177
the U.S. entry to the war:
It will cost us many human lives and millions of dollars
before we get out of this war. It is the munition makers and
the great capitalists who are now waving the Stars and Stripes
and calling us immigrants hyphenated Americans . . . they
have worked up a veritable hysteria for 100-percent Ameri­canism
and contempt and suspicion against us who know
two or more languages, and were born on the other side of
the ocean. . . . I have nothing to say in favor of Kaiser
Wilhelm . . . but that my only son has been drafted to fight
the German people, that wounds my very heart.1 42
In both Canada and America, the strongest reactions against
perceived alien cultures in their societies came during the xenopho­bic
backlash and Red Scare that followed the war. Native-born Ca­nadian
and American nationalists believed that the only thing that
could save the purity of the Anglo-Saxon culture was a total Ameri­canization
and Canadianization of their foreign-language-speaking
minorities.1 4 3 In 1919 the first so-called Americanization Conference
met, sponsored by the Department of the Interior in Washington.
This marked the beginning of a sharp suppression of almost all for­eign
languages used in the United States.1 44
In their quest to Americanize and Canadianize their foreign-born
populations, the governments of the United States and Canada were
particularly successful in regards to the Scandinavians, who already
were sufficiently similar to the Anglo-Saxons in regards to race, reli­gion,
and language. Several decades of discriminatory provincial leg­islation
aimed at the use of languages other than the established
English and French left a deep impact on Canadian students of
Scandinavian descent. The use of foreign languages in public schools
was strictly prohibited in Canada, even during recesses and lunch-times.
1 4 5 The use thereof led to repercussions and punishment.
Saskatchewan, home to many of the Canadian Scandinavians, out­lawed
foreign-language teaching during school hours in 1919.1 4 6 How­ever,
there were not many schools to which the legislation could
apply. Only five (possibly seven) schools in Saskatchewan were teaching
178
From W. A . Mackintosh and W. L . G . Joerg, eds., Canadian Frontiers of Settle­ment,
Vol. 7, Group Settlement: Ethnic Communities in Western Canada (Toronto:
M a c M i l l a n , 1 9 3 6 ) , 1
179
F r o m Helge Nelson, The Swedes and the Swedish Settlements in North America,
340
180
Norwegian at the time of the introduction of the ban.1 47
However, the monolingual policy of the government did not go
unopposed. In the 1970s the Ukrainians in Alberta conducted a
successful campaign aimed at having their language approved as an
elective in public schools.1 4 9 The Scandinavians were not sufficiently
organized to be able to launch a similar campaign in a successful
way.1 4 9 By this time, they were firmly integrated into Canadian soci­ety
and did not appear to find this a battle worth fighting. The high
standard of education and the secure position of their languages in
their native countries made the Scandinavian Canadians less eager
to promote their languages in the Diaspora.1 5 0 Another influencing
factor was, no doubt, that many of the Scandinavian immigrants to
Canada came as serial migrants from the United States and had
already adopted English as their primary language.151
Speaking Scandinavian languages was, therefore, limited to the
privacy of the home, and also something that declined with every
generation. Canadian government policy was highly effective. The
second- and third-generation Scandinavian Canadians were quickly
and firmly assimilated into mainstream society, speeded further by
the wartime pressure.152 The Scandinavians learned English quicker
and spoke English better than almost all other immigrant groups in
Canada. By 1931, only 3.1 percent of the Norwegians and 2.9
percent of the Swedes in Canada could not speak English. In con­trast,
29.8 percent of Japanese and Chinese immigrants were unable
to speak English at the same time.1 5 3 The rapid disappearance of the
Scandinavian languages in Canada was lamented by many Scandina­vians
of the original pioneer generation. Gulbrand Loken cites an
original Norwegian settler in Canada, who commented on the reced­ing
of her native language. Her attitude is somewhat representative
of the first-generation Scandinavian immigrants:
I didn't have much trouble learning to speak English, or
adapting to this country. My husband had more difficulty. He
learned his English working in a sawmill in the States. It
seems that the Norwegian traditions have been difficult to
carry on. I have kept up my Norwegian baking. I feel it is
too bad that the young people show no interest in learning
181
to speak Norwegian or carrying on the traditions.1 54
Even more reluctant to surrender the Norwegian language was
the Norwegian Lutheran Church in Canada.1 5 5 For centuries, the
Lutheran churches had been the primary bearers and upholders of
culture in Scandinavia. They were intertwined with education and
responsible for ensuring that at least a minimum level of literacy was
maintained among the population.
In the Lutheran tradition, all children were taught early to read
and write. A l l Norwegian children had to be confirmed, and that
meant Christian instruction in the Bible, Bible history, catechism,
and the hymnal. This began in the home, was continued at school,
and climaxed in two years of intensive memorization and review
from about age fourteen to sixteen. This was the period often re­ferred
to as "reading for the minister." Upon confirmation, a youth
was accepted as a full member of the church and treated as an
adult.1 5 6
The state church of Norway was opposed to emigration from
Norway, and therefore Canadian Norwegians had troubles finding
enough ministers for their communities, since there were very few
Lutheran ministers among the immigrants.1 5 7 As in the case of the
Swedish immigrants to Canada, not only did many of the Scandina­vian-
speaking ministers come from a mother church in the United
States, but also their liturgies, hymnals, and translations of the Bible
d i d . 1 5 8 The Lutheran churches had strong positions among the Scan­dinavian
Canadians and were deeply involved in education. The
Scandinavian Lutheran churches in Canada set up a large number of
schools. It is estimated, for example, that the Norwegian Lutheran
church schools in North America alone had a total attendance of
about 150,000 students.1 5 9 Also, on the initiative of Norwegian
Lutherans, two colleges were established in the Canadian west: Camrose
Lutheran College in Alberta (1911) and Outlook College in
Saskatchewan (1915).1 6 0 Besides promoting Lutheranism and educa­tion
in general, one of the primary goals of these colleges was to
promote and "preserve our Norwegian language as long as possible."1 61
There was a feeling among many Norwegians in North America that
"our day is in danger of losing its soul in the midst of the many things
182
that engross our attention."1 6 2 The situation was similar among the
Swedish-Canadians. The Lutheran Church was the institution that
kept the traditional values alive. As a Scandinavian-American im­port,
firmly rooted in the prevalent religious and political attitudes of
a previous wave of emigrants to America, it was a promoter of a
"frozen" immigrant culture. In many ways, it preserved and kept the
values that had been dominant in Sweden at the time of the emigra­tion,
during the 1860s-1900s. These Swedish-American immigrants
of an earlier generation often felt that there was a lack of Swedish
national consciousness in the Swedish-Canadian community, espe­cially
in relation to the situation among the Swedes in the United
States.1 6 3
One cultural expression that was particularly strong among
Lutherans in Sweden was the historical importance given to the warrior
king Gustavus Adolphus. However, even as the centrality of Gustavus
Adolphus as a symbol for Swedishness in Sweden and among Swed­ish
Canadians began to decline in the mid-twentieth century, the
Swedish Lutheran Church in Canada continued to hold his name in
high regard.1 6 4 As late as 1989, the publication celebrating the cen­tennial
of the New Stockholm Lutheran Church still depicted Gustavus
Adolphus in the same heroic way he was usually portrayed in the late
1800s.
Gustavus II Adolphus succeed his father to the throne in 1611.
He was a staunch defender of the Lutheran faith and fought in
Germany to save the Lutherans there from being crushed by the
armed forces of the Roman-Hapsburg empire. His victory in 1631
blocked this Roman Catholic countermove in Germany. He rejected
the aims of those who would compel all Roman Catholics and Cal­vinists
to adopt the Augsburg Confession. He would guard the evan­gelical
faith, but he would not deprive any person of the freedom of
his own religious convictions. In his foreign relations he was a true
champion of the liberty of conscience.1 65
As an illustration of the centrality and strength of the church
among the Scandinavians in Canada, focusing on church attendance
shows sharply different trends between Scandinavians in Canada and
in the home countries. Not only did 90 percent of the first- and
second-generation Scandinavian Canadians oppose exogamy outside
183
the Lutheran religion,1 6 6 church attendance increased with every
generation, suggesting a development toward social conservatism similar
to that of previous Scandinavians to the United States.1 67
As H . Arnold Barton has pointed out, the Scandinavians in
America were considerably more conservative in outlook and lifestyle
than the homeland Scandinavians. "Surely many a Swedish-Ameri­can
farm family in, say, Minnesota or Washington State lived a life
closer to what they or their forebears had left than did their relatives
in Stockholm or Norrköping."1 6 8 The conservatism of the Swedish
Americans was strong also in relation to the Swedish Canadians. The
Swedish-Canadian attitude toward the Swedish Americans was in
many ways similar to that of the homeland Swedes.1 6 9 There was
sometimes a feeling among homeland Swedes as well as Swedish
Canadians that the Swedish Americans revealed a sense of superior­ity
over them.1 7 0 Correspondingly, there was an inferiority complex
among the Swedish Canadians and the recently arrived Swedish im­migrants
to Canada toward the Swedish Americans.1 7 1 Not only
were they already familiar with the English language and North Ameri­can
society, they were also economically better off and had often a
higher level of education.1 7 2 The Swedish Americans did not consti­tute
a majority of the Swedes in Canada, but they were a visible and
influential minority.1 7 3 Importantly, they soon dominated the cultural
life in the community. Religion and church activities were central to
the activities of the community, and here all ministers in Winnipeg
were, without exception, Swedish Americans. The majority of the
professionals, be they teachers, doctors, dentists, journalists, or law­yers,
were from the United States as well. Nevertheless, the contacts
between the Swedes in Canada and the United States were mostly
cordial and uncomplicated.1 74
The political differences became more pronounced during the
decade prior to World War I, as the immigrants arriving to Canada
directly from Sweden often were politically radical and belonged to
another wave of immigrants than the older, religious generation of
Swedish Americans.1 7 5 The latter "tended to support block settle­ment
isolationism, ethnic traditionalism, and religious conservatism."1 76
Despite the efforts of Scandinavian churches and organizations to
keep their languages alive, the children and grandchildren of the
184
immigrants soon forgot the language of their parents. In striking
contrast to some other ethnic groups, Scandinavian Canadians have
tended to feel that it is possible to maintain a general interest in the
"Scandinavian connection" without maintaining an ability to speak a
Scandinavian language. The proportion of the Scandinavian-origin
population in Saskatchewan claiming an ability to speak a Scandina­vian
language declined from 59 percent in 1941 to 40 percent in
1951, 28 percent in 1961, and 20 percent in 1971; by 1971 hardly 1
percent actually used such a language as a primary language spoken
in the home. The rate of decline was even more drastic in the north-central
region, where our detailed survey was conducted: from 78
percent in 1941 to 48 percent in 1951, 35 percent in 1961, and 27
percent in 1971.1 77
Ironically, the conscious government policy to encourage immi­grant
populations to assimilate linguistically were successful primarily
with "preferred" immigrant groups from northern and western Eu­rope,
while it was less successful in regards to the "non-preferred"
groups such as the Slavs, for which it was initially intended. W i t h the
decline of the use of their languages, Canadian and American Scan­dinavians
made religion their primary ethnic marker.
With the Danes the situation was somewhat similar. Due to the
gender imbalance among Danes in America, many Danish men chose
German-American women as their partners, followed by Swedish
Americans and Norwegian Americans. Nevertheless, very few mar­ried
outside their religion. Of the Scandinavians in Canada, the
Icelanders were the most segregated, the Danes the least.1 7 8 Only 57
percent of second-generation Danish Americans were of purely Dan­ish
decent.1 7 9 One reason why many Danes and other Scandinavians
married outside their ethnic groups was the gender imbalance among
the Scandinavian immigrants that lasted well until the middle of the
twentieth century. As late as 1941, the percentage of Norwegian males in
Canada exceeded the number of females by 156 percent.180 This gender
imbalance was perceived as a big problem for many first-generation Scan­dinavian
males in both Canada and the United States. A young Danish
immigrant wrote thus in a letter home from the New World:
What we miss most are the girls! There is nothing but
185
half-grown children here. There are a lot of old bachelors
here just waiting for the girls to get old enough to marry. The
innocent lasses don't even celebrate their fifteenth birthday
before ten old bachelors in their thirties are on their knees
proposing to them. But the girls choose those who have the
most grey hair, so there is no point in a young man proposing
here. If an immigrant from Fyn writes home to his girlfriend,
he can never be certain that a Jew has not gotten to her first
and snatched her away right before his nose.1 81
Nevertheless, as language slowly became replaced by religion as
primary ethnic marker, the opposition to ethnic exogamy became
less significant than the opposition to religious exogamy. In a survey
among Scandinavian Canadians in Saskatchewan conducted in the
1980s, 52.3 percent were opposed to the former and a full 77.0
percent to the latter.1 8 2 This clearly illustrates the powerful ascent of
religion as ethnic marker.
CONCLUSIONS
The Scandinavian Canadians were latecomers to the prairies.
They were a diverse group of arrivals from the Scandinavian coun­tries,
including political radicals and teetotalers, Icelandic fishermen,
Norwegian forest workers, Danish dairy farmers, and conservative
Scandinavian-American Midwestern farmers. The Scandinavian-Ca­nadian
community has long stood in the shadow of the much larger
and vital Scandinavian-American community. As proficiency in the
Scandinavian languages died off with the second and third genera­tions
of Scandinavian Canadians, "ethnic" religion replaced language
as the symbol for and carrier of Scandinavian identity. The Scandina­vians
were sufficiently closely akin to the British in race, language,
and religion to assimilate quickly, while keeping certain characteris­tics,
such as Lutheranism and ethnic cooking. By emphasizing the
dissimilarity of "the other," in this case the Slavs, Jews, and Asians,
rather than pointing out their own closeness to the British, the Scan­dinavian
Canadians showed that they belonged to the WASP major­ity
while still being able to distinguish themselves as a distinct group.
186
In their strong emphasis upon religious identity the Scandinavian
Canadians have followed the Scandinavian-American pattern, which
differs sharply from that of the homeland Scandinavians, who are the
most secularized people in the world, particularly the Swedes and the
Danes. The Scandinavian-Canadian community was, to some ex­tent,
a community of chain migrants, or at least the dominating
figures within the community were, as pastors, religious denomina­tions,
books, newspapers, and social clubs all came predominantly
from the United States.
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. "Swedish Immigration to Canada 1923-9: The Case of Port Arthur,
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. Scandinavian Roots, A m e r i c a n Lives: Scandinavian Emigration to North
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Hofstadter, Richard. Social Darwinism in American Thought. Rev. ed. Boston:
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Kristjanson, W. "1875—Westward to Manitoba." The Icelandic Canadian (Summer
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Kyba, Patrick. "Ballots and Burning Crosses—The Election of 1929." In Politics
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Laxdal, Jon K. "The Founding of New Iceland." The Icelandic Canadian (Summer
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Linck, Olaf. Kanada, Det store fremtidsland: Fremtidsmulighederne og udvandrede
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the Life of the New Stockholm Lutheran Church. Stockholm, Saskatchewan:
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ENDNOTES
1. Elinor Berglund Barr, The Swedish Experience in Canada: A n Annotated Bibliog­raphy,
Meddelanden från Svenska Emigrantistitutet, no. 4 (Växjö: 1991), 5.
2. Mauri A . Jalava, "The Scandinavians as a Source of Settlers for the
Dominion of Canada: The First Generation, 1867-1897," Scandinavian-Cana­dian
Studies I (1983), 4-
3. Francis C . Hardwick, Philip Moir, eds., The Return of the Vikings: Scandi­navians
in Canada, Canadian Culture Series (Vancouver, B.C.), 21.
4. Ibid., 21.
5. U l f Beijbom, Amerika, Amerika! En bok om utvandringen (Stockholm:
Natur och Kultur, 1977), 36.
6. Ibid., 62.
7. Ibid., 156,
8. Ibid., 157.
9a. Ibid.
9b. Helge Nelson, The Swedes and the Swedish Settlements in N o r t h America,
vol. 1 (Lund: Gleerups, 1943), 359. Per Anders Rudling, "Ukrainian Swedes in
Canada: Gammalsvenskby in the Swedish-Canadian Press, 1929-1931," Scandina­vian-
Canadian Studies 15 (2005-2006): 84-111. Folke Hedblom, "The
Gammalsvenskby People: Swedish-Canadian Immigrants From South Russia,"
The Swedish-American Historical Quarterly 34, no. 1 (January 1983): 32-48.
"Gammalsvenskbyborna, Canadian Website," http://www.svenskbyborna.com/
canadian%20site.htm (accessed 13 June 2006).
10. Lars Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg: Porten till prärien 1872-1940
(Växjö, Sweden: Emigrantinstitutets Vänner, 1994), 231.
11. Beijbom, 159.
12. Ibid.
13. Helge Nelson, Canada: Nybyggarlandet (Stockholm: A . B . Magn. Bergvalls
Förlag), 57.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., 174.
189
16. Beijbom, 162.
17. Ibid., 163.
18. H . O . Frimodt-Møller, Dansk Bosaettelse i Canada (Copenhagen: Dansk
Traktatselskabs Forlag, 1927), 18-19.
19. H . Arnold Barton, Scandinavian Roots, American Lives: Scandinavian Emigra­tion
to N o r t h America (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2000), 12.
20. Beijbom, 164-
21. Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, rev. ed. (Bos­ton:
Beacon Press, 1955), 170-200.
22. Jalava, 10
23. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 156.
24. Jalava, 3.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., 8-9.
28. Ibid., 8, 14.
29. Ibid., 3.
30. Ibid., 3.
31. M . C . Urquhart, ed., Historical Statistics of Canada (Toronto: The
Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd., 1965), 18; and Robert E. Park, The Immi­grant
Press and Its Control, Americanization Studies—The Acculturation of Im­migrant
Groups in American Society, ed. William S. Bernard, no. 7 (Montclair,
N.J.: Patterson Smith, 1971), 317.
32. S. J. Sommerville, "Early Icelandic Settlements in Canada," Papers Read
Before the Historical and Scientific Society of Manitoba (1945), 26.
33. Valerie Knowles, Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immi­gration
Policy, 1540-1990 (Toronto and Oxford: Dundurn Press, 1992), 51.
34. W. Kristjanson, "1875—Westward to Manitoba," The Icelandic Canadian
(Summer 1975): 19.
35. Jón K . Laxdal, "The Founding of New Iceland," The Icelandic Canadian
(Summer 1992): 197.
36. A l a n B. Anderson, "Scandinavian Settlements in Saskatchewan: Migra­tion
History and Changing Ethnocultural Identity," Scandinavian-Canadian Studies
2 (1986): 95.
37. Sommerville, 29.
38. Anderson, 95.
39. Sommerville, 26.
40. Ibid., 28.
41. Ethel Howard, ed., G i m l i Saga: The History of G i m l i , Manitoba (Altona,
Manitoba: Gimli Women's Institute, 1975) ,22.
42. Jalava, 7.
190
43. Ibid.
44. Kristjanson, 19.
45. Jalava, 7.
46. Ibid.
47. Frimodt-Møller, 28.
48. Jalava, 8, 13.
49. Frimodt-Møller, 28.
50. Jalava, 8.
51. Ibid.
52. Varpu Lindstöm-Best, "The impact of Canadian Immigration Policy on
Finnish Immigration, 1890-1978," Siirtolaisuus-Migration 8, no. 2 (1981): 7.
53. Anderson, 95.
54. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 44.
55. Ibid., 45.
56. Ibid., 47.
57. To give an idea of the size of the community of New Stockholm it can
be mentioned that the central point of the community, the New Stockholm
Lutheran Church, had 96 communicant members plus 56 children in 1922,
almost forty years after its establishment. Lundquist, 13.
58. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 31.
59. Sommerville, 34-
60. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 81.
61. Ibid., 51.
62. Ibid., 81.
63.Ibid.
64- U l f Beijbom, Introduction to Lars Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 5.
65. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 17.
66. Ibid., 41.
67. Lundquist, 8.
68. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 41, 42.
69. Loken, 137.
70. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 41.
71. Ibid., 67-68.
72. Ibid., 67.
73. Ibid., 43-44.
74. Ibid., 45, 68.
75. Ibid., 44.
76. Loken, 178.
77. Elinor Berglund Barr, The Scandinavian Home Society 1923-1993: A Place to
Meet, A Place to Eat (Thunder Bay, Ont.: Scandinavian Home Society, 1996), 12.
78. Idun Engberg, Danske nybyggere i Canadas skove (Copenhagen: Gyldendal,
191
1950), 84.
79. Irene Howard, Vancouver's Svenskar: A History of the Swedish Community
i n Vancouver (Vancouver, B.C.: Vancouver Historical Society, 1970), 44.
80. Vilhelm Moberg, Den okända släkten: En bok om svenskarna och Amerika
i går och i dag (Stockholm: Bokförlaget PAN/Norstedts, 1968), 104.
81. Beijbom, 221, quoting Alfred Söderström, B l i x t a r på Tidnings-Horisonten:
Samlade och Magasinerade (Warroad, Minn., 1910).
82. Gulbrand Loken, From Front to Frontier: A History of the Norwegians in
Canada (Toronto: The Canadian Publishers, 1980),168.
83. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 82-83.
84. Ibid., 83.
85. Ibid., 88.
86. Elinor Berglund Barr, "Swedish Immigration to Canada 1923-29: The Case
of Port Arthur, Ontario," Swedish-American Historical Quarterly 51, no. 2 (2000): 150.
87. Loken, 170.
88. Barr, "Swedish Immigration to Canada," 150-51.
89. Loken, 171-72.
90. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 56.
91. Ibid., 84.
92. Ibid., 83.
93. Loken, 169.
94. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 82.
95. Olaf Linck, Kanada, Det store fremtidsland: Fremtidsmulighederne og u d v a n d ­rede
landsmaends skaebner i Kanada (Copenhagen: E. Jespersens Forlag, 1926), 153.
96a. Sven Delblanc (1931-1992) remains one of the most popular writers
in Sweden. His experiences from Canada are described in Kanaans land
(Stockholm: Bonniers, 1985) and Agnar (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1993).
96b. Delblanc, Kanaans land, 74-75.
96c. Chris Hale, "Ethnic Minorities on the Canadian Prairies in the Writ­ings
of Aksel Sandemose and Sven Delblanc," Scandinavian-Canadian Studies 8
(1995): 42. Hale quotes Howard Palmer, "Prejudice and Discrimination," The
Canadian Encyclopaedia, 2d ed., Vol. 3 (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1988), 1,741.
97. George Fisher Chapman, "Winnipeg: The Melting Pot," The Canadian
Magazine, vol. 33, no. 5, September 1909.
98. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 82.
99. Ibid., quoting Canada, 20 and 27 April 1899.
100. Ibid., 157, quoting Svenska Canada Tidningen, 4 March 1913.
101. Ibid., 157-58, quoting Svenska Canada Tidningen, 11 March 1913.
102. "Kraftiga gestalter med sina öppna, ärliga drag, sticka bjärt av mot de
slaviska elementen som här även äro väl representerade." Ibid., 158, quoting
Sveaska Canada Tidningen, 7 August 1903.
192
103. En judes "föga avundsvärda gestalt." Ibid., quoting Canada, August 8,1902.
104. Ibid., quoting Svenska Canada Tidningen, 19 May 1905.
105. Ibid., quoting Svenska Canada Tidningen, 7 September 1910.
106. Literally, "the slentered-eyed raccoons of the city." The Swedish words
for "raccoon" is tvättbjörn (tvätt means "laundry," björn "bear").
107. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 158.
108. Patrick Kyba, "Ballots and Burning Crosses—The Election of 1929,"
in Politics in Saskatchewan, ed. Norman Ward and Duff Spafford (Regina, Uni­versity
of Saskatchewan: Longmans Canada Limited, 1968), 106.
109. Anderson, 98.
110. Kyba, 111.
111. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 87.
112. Ibid, 85, 159.
113. Ibid, 84.
114. Ibid, 87, quoting Canada, 15 February 1900.
115. Ibid.
116. Ibid, 201.
117. Ibid, 169.
118. Ibid, quoting Svenska Canada Tidningen, Ti September 1914-
119. Ibid.
120. Ibid.
121. Beijbom, 221.
122. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 169, quoting Svenska Canada
Tidningen, 14 October 1914 and 10 March 1915.
123. Ibid, 170.
124- Ibid, quoting Svenska Canada Tidningen, 25 April 1917.
125. Ibid, 165.
126. "Under the emergency powers of the War Measures Act, the federal
government began to intern enemy aliens suspected of being anything other
than peaceful and trustworthy residents of Canada. A total of 8,579 enemy
aliens were interned, of whom only 1,192 were Germans resident in Canada.
Some 5,954 internees were described as Austro-Hungarians, and the overwhelming
majority of these were almost certainly Ukrainians. . . . Some Ukrainians were in­terned
for attempting to enlist in the Canadian army!" O . W. Gerus and J. E. Rea, The
Ukrainians in Canada. (Ottawa: The Canadian Historical Association, 1985), 11.
127. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 165.
128. Strickton, 44.
129. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 165, quoting Winnipeg Telegraph, 10
June 1919.
130. Ibid.
131. Gerus and Rea, 11.
193
132. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 167.
133. Ibid., 168.
134. Arnold Strickton, "Ethnicity and Relations with 'the O l d Country':
Norwegians in Rural Wisconsin," in Minorities and Mother Country Imagery, So­cial
and Economic Papers No. 13, ed. Gerald L. Gold (St. John's: Institute of Social
and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1984), 43.
135. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, "Threats and Responses: Washington Talk; A n Order
of Fries, Please, But Do Hold the French," New York Times, 12 March 2003.
136. Strickton, 44-
137. Ibid., 43.
138. Ibid., 44.
139. Ibid.
140. Skårdal, Dorothy Burton, The Divided Heart (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1974), 308.
141. Ibid., 310-14.
142. Ibid., 310, quoting Hans Anderson Foss, Valborg (Decorah, Iowa, c.
1927), 140-41.
143. Ibid., 308.
144- Heinz Kloss, The American Bilingual Tradition (Rowley, Mass.: Newbury
House, 1977), 34.
145. Loken, 193.
146. Anderson, 103.
147. Ibid., 103, 110.
148. Jim Cummins, "Language and Canadian Multiculturalism: Research
and Politics," in Osvita: Ukrainian Bilingual Education, ed. Manoly R. Lupel
(Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 2005), 77-92.
149. Loken, 193.
150. Anderson, 103. The Ukrainians, by contrast, perceived that there was
a need to preserve and maintain their language, which they felt was under threat
in their homeland, Soviet Ukraine.
151. Ibid., 99.
152. Erik J. Friis, ed., The Scandinavian Presence i n N o r t h America (New
York: Harper's Magazine Press, 1976), 29.
153. Loken, 195
154- Ibid., 193, quoting the memoirs of Mrs. Laura Lerdall, Outlook,
Saskatchewan (Saskatchewan archives).
155. Ibid., 194.
156. Ibid., 130.
157. Ibid., 131.
158. Virgil Lundquist, A Century of Faith: A Brief Look at the Faith of Our Fathers
i n the Life of the New Stockholm Lutheran Church (Stockholm, Saskatchewan: The
194
Centennial Committee of New Stockholm Lutheran Church, 1989), 3.
159. O. M . Norlie, History of the Norwegian People (Minneapolis: Augsburg,
1921), 381.
160. Loken, 131.
161. Ibid, 156, 193.
162. Ibid, 132, quoting Lars W. Boe, President of St. Olaf College, Northfield,
Minnesota, 1937.
163. Ljungmark, Svenskarna Winnipeg, 117.
164. Ibid, 198.
165. Lundquist, 6.
166. Anderson, 106.
167. In his survey of Scandinavians in Saskatchewan, A l a n Anderson found
that "by generation, 69.2% of the first generation reported regular attendance,
compared to 82.4% of the second and 97.4% of the third! Thus our hypothesis
that regularity of attendance would decline with each new generation seemed to
be reversed." Ibid, 102.
168. H . Arnold Barton, A Folk Divided: Homeland Swedes and Swedish Ameri­cans
1840-1940 (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsalensis, 1994), 338.
169. Lars Ljungmark, "Swedes in Winnipeg up to the 1940s: Inter-Ethnic
Relations," in Swedish Life i n American Cities, ed. Dag Blanck and Harald Runblom
(Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets, Historie och Antikvitets Akademiens Konferenser,
1985), 60-61.
170. Barton, A Folk Divided, 337.
171. Ljungmark, Svenskarna i Winnipeg, 160, 201.
172. Ibid, 160.
173. For instance, in Winnipeg the Nordic-born population (Scandina­vians,
Finns, and Icelanders) constituted 5.2 percent in 1901 and 2.7 percent in
1911. If the U.S.-born Scandinavians were included, the numbers were 7.9 per­cent
in 1901 and 3.6 percent in 1911. Ibid, 96-97.
174. Ibid, 162.
175. Ibid, 117, 162.
176. Anderson, 101.
177. Ibid, 99.
178. Loken, 192.
179. Kristian Hvidt, Flugten til Amerika eller Drivkraefter i masseudvandringen
fra Denmark 1968-1914 (Århus: Universitetsforlaget, 1971), 314-15.
180. Loken, 197.
181. Fredrick Hale, ed, Danes i n N o r t h America (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1984), 47, quoting a letter, signed " A Happy Boy," sent from
Sanborn, Barnes Country, Dakota Territories, January 1888.
182. Anderson, 106.